Culinary School vs. On-the-job Chef Training

By Betty Hallock, Los Angeles Times

July 28, 2011

Cole Dickinson, the chef de cuisine at Michael Voltaggio's soon-to-open West Hollywood restaurant, Ink, got his culinary education the old-fashioned way: in the kitchen.

That might sound obvious, but it makes him something of an anomaly as the number of culinary schools multiplies, drawing legions of novice cooks with the promise of turning them into top chefs.

Yet the less-touted, less-glamorized path of working one's way up through the restaurant kitchen ranks is starting to sound more appealing. At a time when for-profit professional cooking schools are coming under more scrutiny, some of L.A.'s rising chefs — like Dickinson — are succeeding without ever having stepped into the classroom.

For-profit schools across the country are facing a flurry of lawsuits claiming fraud; they're accused of misleading students about tuition costs, job placement rates and how much they'll earn after graduating.

The cautionary tale of a would-be chef goes like this: A starry-eyed youth dreams of helming a restaurant kitchen and enrolls in a $60,000 culinary program but upon graduation still qualifies only for a job as a $10.50-an-hour line cook and struggles to work off crippling school loans that, with interest, can balloon to nearly $100,000. Dream crushed.

Meanwhile, Dickinson has a coveted gig at one of L.A.'s most hotly anticipated restaurants. He was a 17-year-old bussing tables for Charlie Palmer in Healdsburg, Calif., when he first considered culinary school. "I didn't have the money. I had a single mom," Dickinson says, "so I got it in my head that I'd ask Charlie if he'd sponsor me and I'd come back and work for him. He basically said, 'Don't be an idiot. Work for me for a couple of years and I'll get you in wherever you want to go.'

In a year and a half, I'd worked my way around every station of that kitchen.... I don't regret not going to culinary school at all."

Besides his time with Palmer, Dickinson, now 27, worked at the Fat Duck in England, for Laurent Gras at L2O in Chicago, then for Voltaggio at the Tavern Room in West Virginia and at José Andrés' Bazaar in Los Angeles.

In interviews with a dozen chefs and restaurateurs, few recommended culinary school; none said it was necessary. "We get asked all the time," says Karen Hatfield, who, along with her husband, Quinn, owns Hatfield's in Los Angeles. "Quinn and I don't recommend it to anybody ever. It's such a huge financial burden now." (She went to cooking school; he didn't.) And yet all but one of the restaurant's kitchen staff of about 15 attended culinary school.

Palmer, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., who grew an empire out of his Manhattan restaurant Aureole, isn't so adamant. He advocates cooking school "if the person has the resources. But there's an enormous range as far as the quality of cooking schools. It's something especially younger students don't really understand."

Even at well-regarded not-for-profit colleges, such as the C.I.A., it might not make economic sense. A two-year associate's degree program at the Culinary Institute of America costs $50,000. A bachelor's degree is more than $100,000. According to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage of a restaurant cook is $21,990. (That's about one-third the cost of tuition for the culinary arts program at the for-profit Art Institute of California in Santa Monica.)

"Is it true that graduates [have to] pay their dues?" says Bruce Hillenbrand, vice president responsible for admissions at the C.I.A. "Absolutely, just like other graduates initially going into other careers." He points out that a C.I.A. survey shows that its graduates can expect to double their salaries within the first five years.

According to the C.I.A., the student loan default rate among its graduates since 2008 is less than half the rate at for-profit schools.

There are now several hundred culinary programs in the U.S., many operated by for-profit companies such as Art Institutes and Career Education Corp., the parent of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, which has 16 locations in the U.S. More culinary schools keep popping up. Last year, Triumph Education Group launched the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Chicago and Austin, Texas, with plans to expand.

Enrollment in culinary programs at Career Education was 13,100 at the end of 2010, up 20% from 2009 — though new student enrollment was down 3% in the fourth quarter. The Pasadena Cordon Bleu is one of the company's schools slapped with a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud. A $40-million settlement of a class-action suit against San Francisco's California Culinary Academy, also a Career Education school, is pending.

"Learning the same foundational cooking techniques taught at the original Le Cordon Bleu in Paris affords opportunity," says Career Education spokesman Mark Spencer. "But as with all education, it's no guarantee of success."

Regarding the lawsuit against the Pasadena Cordon Bleu, Spencer says that "the plaintiffs' attorney trying to assemble a viable class-action case has met with several setbacks…. We're confident the school will prevail on the merits of the case."

Charlie Lucas, 22, has worked at Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica, staged at the highly acclaimed Benu in San Francisco and now has a starting position at Daniel Boulud's Café Boulud in New York. He also skipped cooking school.

Two years ago he wanted to try cooking professionally but had no experience and no money for school, so he went knocking on doors for a job. "I made a list of the best restaurants in L.A. from a 2004 Zagat and started handing out my résumé," he says. He landed at Rustic Canyon because, executive chef Evan Funke says, "he had great heart."

"I went home and practiced dices on potatoes," Lucas says. "Funke gave me a lot of books to read. I was cooking out of Alain Ducasse's encyclopedia for six months trying to understand the recipes, the flavor profiles.... In my two years [at Rustic Canyon] I mastered every station.

"By the time I knew I wanted to be a chef, I had learned what people learned in school. And I don't have student loans, and it's a really fortunate thing."

Funke, who is a former instructor at Pasadena's Le Cordon Bleu, says, "In 10 years he's going to be the guy to beat."

Disillusioned by his teaching experience, Funke is no proponent of culinary school. "I don't know what's behind this meat-grinder mentality of cooking schools," he says.

"I rarely hire culinary students right out of school," he says. "It's like buying a computer and doing DOS to tell it how to do commands. They're missing information — knife sharpening or even how to hone a knife. They don't know product ID, kitchen etiquette, meat, fish, chicken butchering. Ninety percent of this job is time experience."

Meanwhile, schools are "doing the same thing to culinary students that they did in the housing market," says Funke, pushing too much borrowing for what might be a mirage. "Nobody tells you that you're going to be somebody's prep monkey for a year picking parsley in some subterranean humid kitchen making minimum wage."

Read the rest of the story here.

Oprah, You Are Making Your Biscuits Wrong!

By SAM SIFTON 

Hanna Raskin is the restaurant critic for The Seattle Weekly, but in 1998 she was a greenhorn reporter at The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Miss. Oprah Winfrey was jobbing around the country that year doing publicity for “Beloved,” a film she had commissioned and starred in with Danny Glover. News came that Winfrey was holding a screening in Attala County, where she was born, and Raskin’s editor sent her across the state to watch it with the hometown fans.

“Beloved,” based on Toni Morrison’s novel, takes as its subject the impact of slavery on the human soul. Mystery, violence, sex and supernatural apparition are all part of the story.

There is also a brief sequence in which Sethe, Winfrey’s character, makes biscuits in her dark little farmhouse.
Biscuits are what take us into the kitchen today to cook: fat, flaky mounds of quick bread, golden brown, with a significant crumb. Composed of flour, baking powder, fat and a liquid, then baked in a hot oven, they are an excellent sop for sorghum syrup, molasses or honey. They are marvelous layered with country ham or smothered in white sausage gravy, with eggs, with grits. Biscuits are easy to make.

When the film ended, Raskin said in a recent e-mail, Winfrey took to the front of the theater to take questions about race, gender, oppression and literature.

It did not work out that way. Raskin: “The first audience member to speak said something like: ‘Oprah, y’all made your biscuits wrong. Don’t you remember how we make our biscuits round here?’ I believe the biscuit-making scene lasted about 20 seconds, but the roar of the crowd suggested the speaker wasn’t alone in her outrage.”

Biscuits are like that. You need to make them right or not make them at all, and most people will tell you most of the time that however you are making biscuits, you are making them wrong. This is true especially if you are not from the South or if you are from England, where biscuits are hard and dry and sit on the dividing line between cookie and cracker.

Some people mix their biscuits in a wooden bowl handed down from Grandmother. Some drop biscuits onto a cooking sheet, rather than cutting them out. Some people use lard as the fat, others butter. For some, a biscuit must be huge. Others say small. There are people who beat their biscuits or add salt to them and others who press sugar cubes into the dough. Liquids added to biscuit flour may include buttermilk, heavy cream, flat beer, sour cream or cola. Cream of tartar can make an appearance in a biscuit recipe, as can baking soda.

For Yankees, the principal biscuit issue is flour. Proper Southern biscuits (as proper Southerners will tell you) are made with soft red winter wheat flour, low in protein and gluten — traditionally White Lily brand or Southern Biscuit brand. These are only sporadically and expensively available in the North and West of the country, where the more traditional all-purpose flour is made from sterner spring wheat, with more protein and gluten in it, better for making yeast breads than tender, flaky biscuits.

Some Southerners believe that it is not possible to make a good biscuit north of the Mason-Dixon line. Nathalie Dupree, a biscuit doyenne out of Charleston, S.C., whose “Southern Biscuits” cookbook provides enough biscuit recipes to fill a lifetime, disagrees. “Any biscuit is possible for a Yankee,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Extensive testing in Brooklyn bears her statement out. Cake flour, a low-protein flour that is available in supermarkets from Boston to Chicago, north to Seattle and down to Los Angeles, makes a fine biscuit. Standard Northern all-purpose flour does as well, especially if you allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes or so before cutting it out and baking.

What follows are two simple recipes for biscuits, one made with cake flour and lard; the other with all-purpose flour and butter. The first results in a biscuit with a delicate, silken texture that does well with syrups and runny fried eggs. The second provides a crumbier result, with a density appropriate to the flour, that is marvelous with thick, creamy sausage gravy, heavy on the sage and black pepper.

Neither takes long to put together. Christopher Kimball, the professorial leader of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country and television’s “America’s Test Kitchen,” said in an interview that this feature is crucial to biscuit excellence. “The secret of biscuits is that they are dead simple, and you should be able to make them in your sleep or even in the midst of a blind-drunk hangover,” he said. “To hell with the gourmet stuff.”

All y'all (that's southern plural for "you") can read the rest of the story here.  (N.Y. Times  tiered subscription model).

Ketchup Goes Artisanal?

There's a seasonal shift going on in the condiment firmament. Ketchup, the big red staple of American pantries, is catching up with the cool crowd as chefs and food entrepreneurs seek new inspiration.

"It's a very exciting time to be making ketchup," says Scott Norton, who with Mark Ramadan founded the recently launched Sir Kensington's Gourmet Scooping Ketchup.  

Organic ketchup, spicy ketchup, gourmet ketchup, curry ketchup, all have blossomed in recent years, a development that James Oseland, editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine, has noted with approval. "Who doesn't love a good catsup?" he points out.  

About the whole ketchup vs. catsup thing — like tomato vs. tomahto, this seems to be a matter of personal choice. Oseland uses both depending on his mood.  

The big tomato in American sauce, of course, is Heinz, which launched its ketchup in 1876. Interestingly, this wasn't the company's first venture; Heinz began with a horseradish sauce in 1869. Today, more than 650 million bottles of Heinz ketchup are sold worldwide, adding up to more than $1.5 billion in annual sales.

Tradition is part of the appeal of Heinz; this year the company brought back the classic glass bottles for a limited time in stores. This is the bottle with the "57" on the neck denoting the "sweet spot" one taps to get the ketchup to exit at maximum velocity of .028 miles per hour. But Heinz, the market leader, also has been part of the changing sauce scene, expanding its products to include a no added salt version, organic ketchup, a Hot & Spicy bottle with a kick of Tabasco sauce, and Simply Heinz, which uses sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.  

Hunt's and Del Monte are two other big names in U.S. ketchup; additional brands that have found a place on the shelf include Annie's Naturals Organic Ketchup, Muir Glen Organic Ketchup, Organicville Tomato Ketchup and Stonewall Kitchen Country Ketchup, a product described as "ketchup all grown up."

Norton and Ramadan's ketchup chronicles began about three years ago when they started cooking homemade tomato ketchup as economics majors at Brown University.

"We love ketchup," explains Ramadan. They thought it was curious that there only a few dominant brands of ketchup, as opposed to mustard, for instance, and thought, "wouldn't it be fun to try to make something in our own kitchen."

They held tasting parties and came up with two flavor profiles, classic and spiced, now available online and in stores including Williams-Sonoma and Whole Foods Market. The ketchup, billed as having less sodium and sugar than leading brands, is sweetened with agave nectar, honey and raw brown sugar and includes apple cider vinegar for a tangy kick. Other ingredients include coriander, lime juice, allspice, cilantro and cayenne pepper.

In some ways the concept of gourmet ketchup sounds slightly oxymoronic. Ketchup, a burger's best friend, is unabashedly of the people and a product that tends to stir strong opinions.

Read the rest of the story here.

Another Growing Career Path for Chefs??

Hy-Vee Brings in Full-time Chef

America is in the middle of a cooking Renaissance.

People are rediscovering the art of home cooking and the advantage it has on their family - from saving money to healthier meals.

The Empire Hy-Vee, located at 4101 S. Louise Ave., has just made the family dinner a little more attainable. They hired a full-time chef to oversee food displays, conduct food preparation demonstrations, hold classes and act as a resource to shoppers.

"To have a chef is a great asset for the store and the customers," says Jenn Colgan, registered dietitian. "Having that culinary expert available to give people ideas on how to incorporate new things in their meals and recipes" is a valuable service.

Chef Scott Teal started in June.

He is planning to demonstrate new items, highlight food trends and will begin holding classes in August.
"Making your own food is enjoyable and economical. The goal is to push that forward," says Teal of Brandon.

He will incorporate fresh and new ingredients to inspire novice and experienced cooks.  Originally from Brookings, Teal got his training at the Texas Culinary Academy and stayed in Austin, Texas, for 20 years. A cook for 25 years, he has worked in restaurants and long-term care facilities. He's happy to be back in South Dakota, where he still has family.

New produce will figure heavily into his demonstrations and his recipes. For example, there is a new chocolate grape tomato. "It has a more brownish color and is new to the market. We're able to bring that in and expose the item to Sioux Falls cooks."

There will be a dedicated space at the store for his cooking demonstrations. He will show how to make a dish from start to finish. "It will take the guessing out of cooking meals. And people can watch while they're shopping."

It's a natural fit, Colgan says. He's a good resource for shoppers craving contemporary meal ideas or those wanting to try a new food. He will use locally grown food and fresh herbs when possible.

Today's push is to make meals healthier, and Teal "will help us incorporate more variety into our diets," Colgan says. Teal will be creating his own recipes and showcasing the store's recipes.

Read the complete story here.

Firehouse Cook is a Cheesecake Master

Johnny Scruggs picked up the last perfect strawberry, buffed it on a paper towel, placed it at the summit of his masterpiece, sealed it in place with a drizzle of gelatin, then stepped back to admire his work.

The objet d’art was his strawberry cheesecake, a confection so prized in Prince George’s County’s fire circles that it has earned him the nickname “Cheesecake Johnny.”

He had shopped for the ingredients — fresh eggs, Philly cream cheese, Breakstone’s sour cream and unsalted butter — then amassed them on the kitchen counter at Northview Community Fire/EMS Station No. 816 in Bowie, where he is assigned as a firefighter and paramedic.

Hoping that an emergency wouldn’t occur while he cooked, he beat the ingredients by hand (he never uses a mixer), kissed them with just the right amount of pure vanilla extract, lined a pan with parchment paper, crafted a golden crust of graham cracker crumbs and, with the care of a mother touching her infant, poured the mixture into the pan.

“There it is,” he said, beaming proudly. “Now into the oven it goes.”

Firehouse cooking is a skill as old as the service itself, but Scruggs takes it to a new level. Popular for his standard firehouse fare, Scruggs draws raves for his cheesecakes, whose aroma, mingling with the scent of disinfectant and rubber from giant engine tires, has become familiar at the station.

“There are a lot of firefighters who can cook standard firehouse chili or barbecue some ribs, but without a doubt he is our most famous dessert chef,” said Mark Brady, a spokesman for the fire department.

Scruggs’s repertoire includes 47 varieties, including chocolate, chocolate-peanut butter (“which,” he said, “tastes just like a Reese’s” cup), coconut, coffee, sweet potato and every fruit from blueberry to key lime. He recently mastered a bean cheesecake and has experimented with a broccoli and squash flavor.  Each cheesecake is infused with natural flavoring and is elaborately decorated. For those who want zing, he will add a taste of the hard stuff.

“A firefighter friend of mine’s 88-year-old grandmother wanted a Jack Daniel’s cheesecake, so I made it for her,” he said. “The alcohol burns off, so there is no effect from it. It wasn’t my favorite, but she loved it. I put a little bottle of Jack Daniel’s on as decoration, and he said she drank that after she ate the cheesecake.”

Once known only within the department, Scruggs’s desserts are now in demand for weddings, anniversaries, family reunions and other events across the region. “I’m already just about booked up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it’s only June,” he said recently.

Mastering cheesecake baking was natural for Scruggs, who cut his teeth in the kitchen at home in Montclair, N.J. His mother, Bernice Smith, a teachers’ assistant, cooked basic weekday meals — meatloaf, roasted chicken and her special breaded shrimp.

His father, George Smith, a laborer whose sunup-to-sundown work schedule precluded him from getting into the kitchen on weekdays, produced weekend specialties such as slow-grilled barbecue and tender beef roasts.

“I can remember standing on a stool that was pushed up to the stove and watching my mother cook eggs and bacon,” Scruggs said. “It was like magic to me. She would take these raw [ingredients] and stand at the stove and miraculously, in a few minutes, breakfast would come.”

Scruggs tried to cook his first egg before he started school, its gooey contents missing the skillet and sliding into the fire below.

Despite the mess, he was hooked.

“I was the oldest of six kids, and there is a five-year gap between me and the next one, so I had a lot of responsibility,” he said. “My mom would leave a note on the fridge telling me, ‘Take this out of the freezer and thaw it,’ or ‘Start cooking the fish,’ so that by the time she got home at 5 or so, there was less stress on her. Later, I actually cooked dinner for the family.”

Read the rest of Cheesecake Johnny's story here.

TV Chefs: From Culinary Teachers to Reality Show Stars

Smile, You're on Camera 

By BRUCE PALLING

What is it that makes food and television go so well together—or, more to the point, achieve such high ratings? Apart from major sporting events and royal weddings, few U.K. programs generate such large audiences year after year as "MasterChef," now in its 17th series since it relaunched in 2005. "Celebrity MasterChef," one of the show's four current strands, recently drew eight million viewers. It isn't just in the U.K. that the show is popular—last year's finale of Australian "MasterChef" caused the traditional leaders' debate in the country's elections to be delayed because the time slots would have clashed.

"There have been three ages of TV chef programs," says Peter Bazalgette, who has produced more than 3,000 episodes of the groundbreaking BBC series "'Food and Drink," and the more populist "Ready, Steady, Cook." He went on to perfect the reality TV show "Big Brother," which is equally praised and reviled. "Until the '70s, the chef, such as Julia Child, would merely stand behind a counter with a bowl and simply tell you what to do. Then the formula changed, with the chef trying to do amusing things to entertain the viewer, until the current phase in this century, where you basically have a reality show, with a celebrity chef in difficult situations. This could be Jamie Oliver trying to make Americans eat healthily or Gordon Ramsay in one of his 'Kitchen Nightmares.' What we discovered was that the best chefs are extrovert showmen, martinets, so now they are full-throated reality shows."

It has become commonplace for aspiring media personalities who once headed to the jungle to enhance their image to now try their hand at cooking competitively in "Celebrity MasterChef." Even those well-established in gastronomic circles are branching into TV. Simon Hopkinson, one of the most private and highly regarded food writers in Britain, has renounced his earlier pledge never to appear on TV—his new series, "The Good Cook," starts next week on BBC One in the U.K.

Matthew Fort, a food writer and judge on "The Great British Menu," says one reason for the plethora of programs is that they are relatively cheap to make, and while gardening or DIY programs have loyal followings too, not everyone has a garden or the desire to do home repairs—but everyone eats three times a day.

He has a point. Food programs are attracting a wider audience. "I think what happened on 'MasterChef' was, for the first time, viewers witnessed ordinary people who were really good at something —just people who could have lived next door or been on the bus. And during the length of the program, they went on to be exceptional chefs and then do something different with their lives," says Karen Ross, the executive producer of the U.K. "MasterChef" series. "It was celebratory—something that everyone can relate to, because even if they don't cook, they all eat," she adds. "The big thing is the audience can relate in terms of 'I could do that, or be that—I really hate my job in the call center or as a doctor or a plumber, and this could free me in some way.'"

But with all this attention and excitement about cooking shows, the puzzling thing is that it doesn't seem to have translated into higher quality standards for food consumption as a whole.

Mr. Fort says food programs do have an impact in broadening public knowledge about different cuisines, but not when it comes to healthier eating. "If you look at the external evidence regarding the public's diet and overweight issues it is not very encouraging," he says. "The sales of prepared meals and microwaves are going up—families prefer to watch television together rather than eat together." But he adds that some shows, like Jamie Oliver's quest to improve school dinners, do help increase awareness about specific foods—even if they don't change the national diet. "When [British chef] Delia Smith uses cranberries or goose fat on a cookery program, there is a 3,000% sales increase, though admittedly from a fairly low base," Mr. Fort adds.

TV programs can also help boost chefs' profiles. "There is no better PR than a TV show if you are a chef," says Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger restaurant in Massachusetts, who has presented programs on the Food Network and PBS for more than a decade. "Suddenly people want to interview you about any subject under the sun and they will also want to try your restaurant—at least once. I put it down to what I call the irrational power of television." He voices concern, however, about those celebrity cooks whose primary goal appears to simply be famous. (Not that he doesn't participate in the new style of TV shows himself; he recently reached the semifinals in the popular U.S. series "The Next Iron Chef.") "Of course, 95% of good chefs are not on television," Mr. Tsai says. "And as for the ones who are but do not have a restaurant, I don't consider them to be chefs, merely culinary entertainers."

Read the complete story here.

Career Advice courtesy of Anthony Bourdain

 As told to Ramin Setoodeh

I was lucky enough to go to the Culinary Institute of America in my 20s, and my big mistake was that I was offered a chef’s job very quickly after I graduated, and I took it. I did that rather than going to France—or even staying in New York, but taking a low-level position at a great restaurant and putting my nose to the grindstone. Once I started down that path, years later I was still working in a procession of not-good restaurants. The lowest of the lows is cooking food for people you hate in a restaurant you hate, with no pride.

I was about getting the biggest paycheck then, so I could see music, smoke expensive weed, do cocaine, that kind of life. It was less important to me that I would get good at my craft. I deluded myself into thinking I was good. And by the time it occurred to me that I’d never worked for a three-star chef, I didn’t have the skills. It was late in the day.

After I graduated, I was working with friends in a restaurant in SoHo called WPA. We helped bankrupt the place in short order. We thought we were creative geniuses, and created a very chef-centric menu that was not what the dining public wanted. We were cooking out of our league. It was not a professional operation. We behaved like a cult of maniacs. I liked the life that went with being a chef. I was getting laid, I was getting high, I was having fun. I had no self-control. I denied myself nothing. I had no moral compass. At age 44, I had never had health insurance. I hadn’t paid my rent on time. I was 10 years behind on my taxes. I owed AmEx for 10 years. I was still living like a college kid—worse even. I essentially partied my way out of a big-league career.

A lot of young cooks who have read Kitchen Confidential ask me for career advice. I tell them if you’re serious about cooking and your craft, do the opposite of what I did. I learned a lot of important skills from my mistake that served me well in both publishing and television. I think the skills I learned as a junkie are skills of determining if this person is full of shit or not. I’m never going to be the kind of person who talks about himself in the third person or has the red M&Ms weeded out of my bowl. You know what you see in the mirror when you’re waiting for the lady on the subway to fall asleep so you can take her purse? I’m a pretty good judge of human nature.

Chef is Now a Glamour Position, Thanks in Part to Reality TV

A career as a restaurant chef, once a blue-collar occupation, has now become a glamour profession.

Driven by reality TV, the Food Network, and food-related media buzz, interest in culinary education is at an all-time high.

Big-name schools like the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University have responded by opening branch campuses across America.

Sensing a business opportunity, numerous for-profit ventures have also jumped onto the culinary education bandwagon. So many have opened in the last few years that fully half the schools currently accredited by the American Culinary Federation are being operated as moneymaking enterprises.

Now, with public higher education facing budget cuts and privately run schools subject to tighter financial aid regulations, the prospects for culinary education seem less rosy.

Compounding these funding concerns is a growing glut of culinary school graduates, many of whom imagined their degrees would be a shortcut to celebrity chef status.


Read the rest of the story here.

French Restaurant Hands Back Michelin Star to Bring in the Diners

The only Michelin-rated restaurant in the southern city of Nimes has handed back its star to become a humble brasserie, in the hope of enticing back people put off by the higher prices that come with the accolade. 

Le Lisita, opposite Nimes' famous Roman arena, clinched its first star from the fabled red restaurant guide in 2006. 

But Michelin stars come at a price for chefs, as the guide expects a standard of service requiring more staff, which pushes up the price of a meal even before ingredients are bought.

Chef Olivier Douet said he had initially cherished the coveted accolade but that the 2008 financial economic crisis forced him into a painful rethink. 

"I am not spitting in the soup – to have a Michelin star is a distinction, a very important recognition of merit," he said.  However, he added that the onerous demands of the gastronomic restaurant barely allowed him to break even. 

Such demands are said to have led top chef Bernard Loiseau to commit suicide in 2003 after it was rumoured he was to lose one of his three Michelin stars. 

"In a starred restaurant, there is one waiter for five to six people. With a brasserie, a waiter can look after twenty to thirty customers," he told Le Parisien newspaper. 

He will now offer a menu with starter and plat du jour for €23.60 (£20.79), which he hopes will allow him to triple the number of clients.

Like other aspiring chefs, Mr Douet had grand plans to expand his Michelin-starred eatery, located in a large property, to a luxury hotel project but "the bankers are scared to lend in a time of crisis to institutions like ours". 

The Lisita hopes to capitalise on a French fashion for lively, high quality and affordable brasseries and "gastro bistros", which are doing a roaring trade along with "restauration rapide" – the French take on fast food.

Many Michelin-starred restaurants, meanwhile, are struggling. 

Read the rest of the story here.

Alive and Cooking

Over his long career as a celebrity chef, Todd Hall has been associated with numerous high-end restaurants. His newest, Temazcal Tequila Cantina, opened in Boston’s Seaport District this spring to overflow crowds. A two-time James Beard Foundation honoree, Hall moved here in 2009 to help launch Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grille chain, another homegrown hit.

More surprising than any success Hall has achieved, though, is the fact that he’s still alive and cooking. A series of personal tragedies and self-destructive choices threatened to end Hall’s career years ago. In 1992, the youngest of his four children drowned in the family’s backyard swimming pool. Three years later, a parking-lot shooting — the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad — nearly killed Hall.

Drug-free for a decade now, Hall, who mastered Mexican cuisine while working in upscale Southwest kitchens, has designed Temazcal to reflect his formidable culinary ambitions — and flair for the unusual. In this cantina, menu items include lobster guacamole, roast suckling pig, goat basted in grapefruit and molasses, and nearly 300 brands of tequila, some rare. The restaurant overlooks Boston Harbor, seating 126 diners inside and another 40 on its waterside patio. Hall runs a kitchen staff of 12 and boasts of having one of the first restaurants to develop its own full-menu iPad app, allowing diners to browse pictures and recipes of what they might consider ordering.

Boston developer Jon Cronin, who hired Hall as a consulting chef on Remy’s sports bars, says he was fully aware of Hall’s checkered past before bringing him in as a partner in the opening of Temazcal. Cronin even read an unpublished memoir Hall wrote, in all its sordid detail, before going into business with him.

Working with Hall carried significant risks, but Cronin admired how Hall had pulled his life and career back together. “Everything Todd’s gone through and where he’s gotten to now is such an achievement,’’ he said. “Look, I’ve worked with several local organizations that treat addiction. If he falls back in six months, so be it.’’

But Hall is also “the hardest worker I know,’’ Cronin added, and his take on Mexican cuisine is an attractive addition to Boston’s restaurant scene. “To me, Todd’s a winner,’’ he said. “His is a fantastic story.’’

In many ways it is also a disturbing one, if ultimately uplifting.

Read the rest of Chef Hall's story here.

Four Leadership Tips from General Colin Powell

This year marks the third time Colin Powell, former secretary of state, national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has delivered the keynote address at this year’s NRA Show.

Powell took the stage Sunday afternoon to answer questions, share anecdotes of his life outside the government and share management tips with the restaurant industry.

Powell said he continues to use the same management principles he learned as a 21-year-old in the Army.

Leadership is all about followers, Powell said. You need to put your followers — or in the case of restaurants, your staff — in the best position to get things done. Give them a sense of mission in addition to goals, and make sure you communicate to them your belief.

Powell’s top tips for being a great leader:

1. Take care of your troops. Give them resources, technology and training
2. Be infectious. Why would anyone follow you otherwise? Good leaders not only motivate but also inspire. “People are searching for this kind of passion in every organization,” said Powell.
3. Recognize performance. Promotions and financial benefits work, but the best recognition is more personal. Tell someone, “You’re doing a great job,” or “I couldn’t do my job without you.” Let people know you see them as essential to the team, no matter their job.
4. It’s not all about the soft stuff. When people are not performing well, you have to let them know. Your good employees always know who isn’t carrying his fair share, and they want the leader to do something about it. If you don’t, you lose their respect. Also, don’t reorganize around a problem. Either retrain someone or fire him.

At the end of his speech, Powell took questions from the crowd, one of which was, “What makes you a loyal customer?” Powell said he always wants to be treated with respect and courtesy. When someone in retail or restaurants pays immediate attention to him and seems genuinely interested, that means a lot. That courtesy inspires him to become a loyal customer.

Memorial Day...

is more than just a long weekend and the traditional beginning of summer and grilling season.  For those who don't know what it's about, or who have forgotten, here's a small reminder.

This letter is thought to have been sent to Lydia Parker Bixby by President Lincoln when it was initially reported that Mrs. Bixby had lost all five of her sons in a single battle. As it turned out, she had lost only two sons in the battle. His kind and thoughtful words were typical of his recognition of the horrible price being paid by so many families supporting the Union.

President Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby was printed by the Boston Evening Transcript on November 25, 1864, the same day it was delivered to her by the adjutant General of Massachusetts, William Schouler.   The following is the text of the letter as it appeared in the Transcript:

 Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Online Ingredients for Success

Waiter Develops Restaurant Reason to Help Others Who Are Sometimes Forgetful

Last summer, a diner at Eatery asked a waiter what is used to make the mascarpone dumpling filling.
The waiter at the Hell's Kitchen restaurant stared blankly before offering this insight: "Mascarpone." Then he made up nine other imaginary ingredients—right as the restaurant's owner walked by.


"He heard me totally lying to these people," the waiter, Michael Mignogna, said recently. "I totally botched it."
The aspiring stand-up comedian-turned-waiter was given an ultimatum: Learn the intricate menu—or lose his job.

He decided to stay. Over the course of two weeks, Mr. Mignogna snapped pictures of every dish, developed a system to categorize information, designed a set of icons to specify everything from potential allergens to temperature choices and cobbled together a rough website that was made available to other waiters at the restaurant.

Then, six weeks ago, the 28-year-old Mr. Mignogna launched Restaurant Reason, a social-networking site that enables restaurants to train staff, do on-line scheduling and provide an internal discussion forum.
Instead of firing him, Eatery became his first customer.

"A light bulb went off in his head," said owner Sean Connolly, who has since purchased a subscription for his second restaurant, Whym. "Michael's really surprised us."

 Gone are the days when a waiter could simply say he recommends the catch of the day with the chef's special sauce. An increasing level of sophistication among chefs is matched, if not surpassed, by demands from diners, who expect detailed descriptions of where the fish was caught, how it was prepared and even its transportation mode to the plate. An array of dietary restrictions and food allergies have complicated menus further, restaurant owners and managers said.

Waiters are drilled in which salads contain gluten, and which sauces harbor sugar; they are trained to decode mysterious descriptions such as "pastrami-style salmon" (it has to do with the spices) and tested on which dishes contain nuts.

"Some of the cooks don't know all the ingredients [if it's not their station]," said Eatery chef James Henderson. Waiters these days, he said, "have to know a lot."

Most restaurants rely on tastings and printed packets that can run into dozens of pages and need to be reprinted as menu items change.

"They're printing up all this paper," said Eatery waiter Jeff Davies, "and there's always something wrong with every one."

The most high-end establishments still tack up schedules on the walls, requiring staff to come to the restaurant to view their shifts and stations.

"We're still there—low-tech," said Kevin Mahan, the managing partner at Gramercy Tavern, who estimated that each employee packet can run to 50 pages. "There just hasn't been anything presented that would make some of this easier or less paper, which would be nice."

Read the rest of the story here.

ORANGE CHIPOTLE HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

A very flavorful variation on one of the mother sauces.  For an even easier option, just add the pureed chipotle, the lime juice and cilantro to a good quality mayonnaise.

2 Tbsp chopped shallots

¼ cup dry white wine

¼ cup orange juice

3 egg yolks

1 cup melted unsalted butter

1 tsp pureed chipotle in adobo

1 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a small saucepan, combine the shallots, white wine, and orange juice.

Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 tablespoons.

Remove from the heat and cool.

In the top of a double boiler over simmering water, whisk the egg yolks and wine reduction until ribbons start to form.

Whisking constantly, drizzle in the melted butter a bit at a time until all is added and an emulsion forms.

Remove from the heat.

Add the chipotle, lime juice, and cilantro, whisking to incorporate.


Adjust seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

Cover and keep warm until ready to serve.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

SALMON and LOBSTER CAKES

(Makes 12 cakes – Serves 6 as an appetizer)

1 Tbsp olive oil

½ cup yellow onion, minced

¼ cup green bell pepper, brunoise

¼ cup red bell pepper, brunoise

¾ cup mayonnaise

2 eggs

2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup Panko bread crumbs

½ tsp sugar

12 oz poached salmon, chopped

12 oz cooked lobster tail meat, chopped

Kosher salt, to taste

Black pepper, to taste

Add the oil to a sauté pan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and peppers and sauté until soft.

 Remove to a large mixing bowl and allow them to cool.

Add the remaining ingredients, except lobster and salmon and mix thoroughly.

Add lobster and salmon and mix gently. Do not over mix. Form the mixture into 2 ounce balls, and flatten them into ¾-inch patties.

Refrigerate and allow cakes to rest for at least thirty minutes prior to cooking. 

Heat a lightly oiled sauté pan or griddle to medium high. 

Cook the patties on both sides until heated through. 

Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with wedges of lime and sprigs of fresh cilantro and serve with chipotle hollandaise sauce.

Chicken Goulash

It's been a while, so I decided it's time to post a few new recipes.  This is the main dish that I prepared for my C.E.C. practical.

 Chicken Goulash

(Serves 4)

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

4 chicken thighs

4 chicken legs

1½ tsp kosher salt

1 tsp Black Pepper

1 yellow onion, medium diced

1 red bell pepper, julienned

1 green bell pepper, julienned

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbsp paprika

1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

½ tsp dried thyme

2 Tbsp tomato paste

½ cup red wine

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 cup canned diced tomato in thick puree

2 cups chicken stock

1 Tbsp cornstarch

½ cup sour cream

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

In a large, heavy pot, heat the oil over moderately high heat.

Season the chicken with Kosher salt and pepper and cook the chicken until browned, turning, about 8 minutes in all, and remove. 

Pour off all but 1 tablespoon fat from the pan. 

Reduce the heat to moderate and add the onion, garlic, and peppers to the pan. 

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. 

Reduce the heat to moderately low and add the paprika, red pepper flakes, dried thyme, and tomato paste to the pan. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. 

Deglaze the pan with the red wine, scraping the bits from the bottom of the pan. 

Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, tomatoes and chicken stock.  Bring to a boil, and reduce to simmer.

Add the chicken and simmer, partially covered, until the chicken is done, about 20 minutes.

Skim fat from the surface as needed.

Remove the chicken.  Dissolve the cornstarch in ¼ cup cold water and add to the pot.

Cook, stirring constantly until the sauce is thickened and shiny.

Temper the sour cream with ½ cup of the sauce and stir it into the sauce. 

Add the chicken and fresh parsley, and season to taste with salt and black pepper.

Serve with noodles, potatoes, or rice.