From Plates to People: Arnold’s New Way Forward

Author: Chloe Wang & Arnold Kuiper

When the Kitchen's Closed

When Covid brought the restaurant industry to a standstill, Arnold’s career trajectory in Europe came to an abrupt pause. For the first time in years, he wasn’t standing behind a line. He was at home, thinking about what to do next.

Then, by chance, a friend who works with young adults on the autism spectrum asked if Arnold would consider giving a cooking lesson to one of them. It seemed simple enough: one class, just to try.

The class quickly became a weekly routine. Over time, the student wanted to do more than cook at home — he wanted to work in a professional kitchen. That moment planted an idea in Arnold’s mind: that teaching could be a way to open doors for people who might not otherwise have access to them.

Learning So He Could Teach

Arnold had already been in the industry for six years, but he had never attended a formal culinary program. If he was going to teach, he wanted to make sure he was prepared to do it well.

So he enrolled in the Grand Diplôme program at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa, a school known for its classical training. “I thought I needed to refine my techniques and learn as much as possible before I started teaching others full time,” he explains. “For me, culinary school was the missing link to bridge my previous experience and knowledge into a role as a teacher.”

While at school, one of his professors connected him with C’est Bon Cooking, a local cooking school that offers a variety of cooking classes for people of different age groups who are interested in cooking. There, Arnold started working as a chef-instructor, finding a new rhythm and a different purpose in food: teaching.

Instead of returning to the Netherlands as planned, he chose to stay in Canada, continuing his classes in Ottawa. Every Sunday, he still teaches his first student — now employed in a restaurant in The Hague — over Zoom.

A Broader Goal

Arnold’s interest in teaching comes from his earlier community service in Sri Lanka, where he had worked with young people on the autism spectrum. Combining that experience with cooking felt natural to him. “When the opportunity arose to combine that with food it seemed like it clicked in my mind instantly,” he says.

For Arnold, teaching isn’t just about learning to cook. It’s about helping people gain skills, confidence, and independence, whether that leads to working in a professional kitchen or simply enjoying food as a way of connection.

Discovering Fermentation

It was this focus on learning and sharing knowledge that eventually led Arnold to Snout & Seek.

The fermentation experience in Luzhou, China, in particular, struck a chord. Learning directly from communities who have been practicing traditional fermentation techniques for generations – soy sauce, vinegar, Baijiu, opened up a new dimension of food for him. “Through initiatives such as the fermentation experience with Snout & Seek, this learning becomes possible,” Arnold says.

“The experience allows me to learn directly at the source, through a community of people who have developed a culture around fermentation for generations.”

“So much of what I know doesn’t come from books,” he adds. “It comes from people. From stories. From meals shared across a table.”

Looking Ahead

Today, Arnold sees Snout & Seek as a way to keep learning and connecting. By bringing together people from different backgrounds and cultures, he hopes to help preserve traditional food knowledge and share it in new ways.

From a bowl of green bean curry at his grandmother’s house, to restaurant kitchens in Europe, to a diverse teaching space in Ottawa and fermentation cellars in China, Arnold’s path has been anything but straightforward.

But if there’s a constant thread through it all, it’s this: food as a way to build understanding, and a place for everyone at the table.