Taria Camerino

Chef Taria Camerino has lived a life made entirely of taste. With a self-described addiction to spices, she has practiced her trade across the globe, studying, teaching and cooking. Taria is also a gastoral synaesthete who has dedicated her life’s work to engaging methods of communication that share her unique observations in ways that others can digest. In much in the same way some synaesthetes see specific colors when they hear musical notes, Taria’s synesthesia enjoins her to use the vocabulary of flavors to express her expertise, and this medium proves to be her greatest resource for collecting, distilling, and feeding back familiarity. Being also a chef with training in classical French pastry, Japanese confectionery, coastal Italian cooking and extensive training in chocolate and the ideas of terroir, Taria parses bits of information and translates them into the energetic vibrations ascribable to their equivalents on the flavor spectrum. It is with an insatiable need for knowledge and the intimate relationship she has developed with not only food, but with flavor itself, that this chef has found a way to share, feed anyone who is willing to taste the listening to an album or the flavors from a 10 hour train ride through hillside Vietnam. Having worked closely with contemporary art galleries, like the Tate Modern, as well as being a member of the International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists and Scientists (IASAS), she is well adept at communicating the essential of how we taste. By working with the International Society of Neurogastronomy, Chef Taria hopes to make full use of this unique gift.