STEPHAN JULIUSBURGER
Principal
Stephan Juliusburger fell into a culinary wonderland as a child and hasn’t yet found his way out. Starting young, he would come home from school and experiment for the family using his mother’s cookbooks. A native of London, England, he was cooking while attending university in Connecticut, ostensibly towards a degree in organic chemistry, when he was asked to create the menus for a new seafood restaurant. Soon after opening a New York Times review gave it two stars and he knew his life would never be the same. Over the following years he continued to develop and open restaurants for investors in Connecticut and Colorado.
While in Colorado Stephan was invited to cook one night for the Grateful Dead, a chance meeting that became a six-year relationship. He went on the road, providing the band and crew with gourmet cuisine in some very unlikely locations. From this work, he was asked to develop the food and beverage for some of the largest events in the eighties – Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic (Giants Stadium), The Statue of Liberty Benefit Concert (Liberty Park), The Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Concert (Giants Stadium), Dylan & the Dead (National Tour), and Bill Graham’s Biggest Party in History (Houston Astrodome).
Looking to continue designing for complex environments, Stephan joined the hotel industry in the mid eighties. For seventeen years he held executive positions with Marriott, Westin, and Sonesta Hotels in New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago, Buenos Aires and Bermuda, specialising in the development and reinvention of food and beverage operations.
Taking a sabbatical in 2003 to complete a Masters in Gastronomy at the University of Adelaide in conjunction with Le Cordon Bleu, he then created Syntuitive. The company has developed new restaurants, written standardised culinary curricula for secondary schools, developed and produced culinary festivals for gastronomic tourism destinations, and master planned the food and beverage footprint for a 1,500 acre, 3,500 room, multi-hotel casino resort destination.