Spotlight on Joshua Campbell, RBA’07

When Scott Depot native Joshua Campbell came to Marshall in 1996, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. One day he was watching Martha Stewart creating magnificent pastries and he decided that was it. That was when he knew.

Josh scheduled a tour with the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan. Due to the prestige of this institute, it normally takes a year to get in. Luckily for Josh, someone had just dropped out. “I had three days notice to take this opening, so I took it. I found an apartment and stayed there in Manhattan with nothing but what was in my suitcase.”

The institute offered a variety of majors, but Josh chose pastries, “I like to bake rather than cook, and I was drawn to the showmanship aspect of pastries,” Josh said.

He served an internship with Ron Ben-Israel Cakes, whose creations have been a favorite among celebrities and the Manhattan's premier hotels.

After the internship was fulfilled in 2004, Josh came full circle and worked for Martha Stewart herself. “I was involved with making the cakes that appear in her magazine. The learning opportunities were endless.”

Josh, always happiest when he is doing a lot of different things, became editorial assistant for Food Arts magazine, which serves the restaurant/hotel industry and is the industry’s only glossy magazine. After a year, he was hired for the PBS television show, “Chef’s Story,” by the producers of “Inside the Actors Studio.” “In this 26-part series,” Josh said, “Dorothy Hamilton interviews top chefs in front of an audience of culinary students. My job was to recruit people for the audience and give them some ideas for questions.

“I was also involved in the wedding season of ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.’ I was the ‘made-for-TV’ guy. You know how a chef will put a cake in the top oven and take it out minutes later from the bottom oven? That was me. I made those cakes for the bottom oven.”

Then, Josh made time to come back to Huntington to complete his requirements for his Regents Bachelor of Arts degree. He appeared on local television station WCHS-TV to give “quick tips” from the pastry world during the morning news. And, in his role as pastry chef, he taught classes at the Cooking and Culinary Institute in downtown Huntington.

Now that his Marshall degree is in hand, Josh is planning to return to Manhattan for another go at the culinary magazine business. As of this writing, prospects look good for this talented chef.