Kitchen Consequential

Local Cooking Schools Test Would-be Chefs’ Metal

Text and Photography By Warren Rojas

Although some might argue that the D.C.-Metro area lacks the glitz of established dining meccas like New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago, the roster of marquee chefs and nationally recognized restaurants that have set up shop within our very borders would suggest we are, at the very least, on the cusp of becoming a can’t-miss culinary stop on the national radar.

Our appetite for gustatory greatness means local restaurant owners, chefs and general managers are always on the lookout for those key front- and back-of-the-house personnel who can help keep their business humming along, or, better yet, propel them to the next tier of stardom by adding that final touch that sets patrons’ imaginations/reviewers’ hearts/the blogosphere on fire.

Lucky for them, that talent pool is being continuously stocked with starry-eyed perfectionists courtesy of The International Culinary School at The Art Institute of Washington, L’Academie de Cuisine and Stratford University School of Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management.

I went behind the scenes at each of the hospitality proving grounds to learn more about what it takes to make it in today’s rough-and-tumble restaurant market. After all, not every aspiring chef can expect to be handed a multimillion/billion-dollar property from some manic reality TV star (can they?).

The International Culinary School at The Art Institute of Washington

Location: 1820 N. Fort Myer Drive, Arlington
Founded: November 2007 (the culinary program was recently re-branded; culinary studies originally debuted in 2001)
Director: Dr. Susan Hendee
2008 tuition: From around $20,000 for a culinary skills diploma to roughly $90,000 for a bachelor’s in food and beverage management
Program length: From nine months (diploma) to three years (bachelor’s)
Total graduates: 135 (since 2003)
Website: www.exploreculinary.com

Starting from Scratch
Kirsten Wright, director of career services at The Art Institute of Washington, views the current crop of TV cooking contests as a “double-edged sword.” While the national attention is certainly appreciated, she worries that the shows “are glamorizing an industry that is a grueling choice. You spend all day on your feet, and you work while everyone else plays.”

Just don’t tell that to the fresh-faced teens who file into the Rosslyn-based campus daily in the hopes of carving out a place for themselves among today’s cooking elite.

Of the three local schools, the newly restructured International Culinary School seems to be the youth magnet, predominantly attracting recent high-school graduates who possess a desire to cook, but who are also looking for a traditional degree to fall back on. The Art Institute has helped court that demographic since 2001 by hosting annual Best Teen Chef competitions— each AI campus promotes local cook-offs, then sends their first-place winners to a national showdown at rotating AI locations (this year’s finals took place in Las Vegas).

Culinary student Matt Acampora said he’s been cooking since he was 13, having worked in various area restaurants, including a current gig at Lansdowne Resort. Having considered The Culinary Institute of America, Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, Johnson & Wales University and even neighboring Stratford University, he was already looking for some additional instruction when a partial scholarship helped seal the deal (though he insisted, “Stratford was nowhere compared to this”).

“You learn proper techniques here,” he said of his AI studies. “It’s helped me to become more successful and professional in my career.”

Culinary student Cecil Cox originally entered the pastry program, but has since decided to explore all sides of the restaurant trade—pastry, culinary and management—to maximize his hiring potential.

“School’s great. Because this is what I wanted to do,” he said, adding that the flexible scheduling and Metro accessibility made AI an easy choice.

Established pastry chef-cum-newly minted instructor Michael Roll said his night students tend to be “a little older, more responsible,” postulating that evening classes are often flush with already working professionals who come in, absorb whatever tidbits they need and methodically knock out assignments just so they can head home for the night.

Though often more trying, Roll said he enjoys helping younger students hone their budding talents.
“They get good,” he said of the dramatic improvements he sees in his classroom from week to week. “There are people who will stay in the area and do really well.”

L’Academie de Cuisine

Location: 16006 Industrial Drive, Gaithersburg, Md.
Founded: 1976
Director: Francois Dionot
2008 tuition: From around $23,000 (pastry) to about $27,000 (culinary arts)
Program length: Approximately one year
Total graduates: Approximately 1,340 (lifetime)
Website: www.lacademie.com

Everyday Iron Chefs
“Our professional programs tend to attract career changers,” L’Academie assistant admissions director Allyson Lara explained, staking the average age of their enrollees at around 27 years old.

As such, L’Academie doesn’t bother with any liberal arts-like electives. Instead, tightly knit groups of students (each section is limited to 24 students per semester) spend virtually every day of their abbreviated tenure mastering the art of producing multicourse meals on deadline in either L’Academie’s kitchens or at pre-arranged externships within various high-end restaurants.

“What we teach them is how to cook,” Lara maintained. “Everything else they can learn on the job.”

Most students arrive at the warehouse-like culinary complex toting some sort of caffeinated beverage, tool chests full of cooking utensils, digital cameras and lots of questions. Dry-erase boards crowded with complex French menus items—“French is the language of food,” Lara stressed—announce the cooking regimen to be covered each morning.

After several hours of instruction and a gourmet breakfast (instructors typically demo the dishes during each lecture, then send the finished plates around so students can inspect and taste the final products for themselves), each morning’s micro presentation becomes a macro challenge as phase I student teams attempt to replicate said meals for dozens of peers and L’Academie staff.

By the time they reach phase II, students must be prepared to cook for the parade of potential employers, including previous attendees Patrick Deiss (2941), Tracy O’Grady (Willow), Christophe Poteaux (Bastille), Tony Chittum (Vermilion) and Jeff Heineman (Grapeseed), who often guest-judge the high-stress “market basket” challenges—ingredient-driven showdowns not unlike those featured on reality cooking programs.

Program director Patrice Olivon sets each market basket in motion by revealing the core ingredients required, meeting with the predetermined teams to review their proposed dishes, then loosing them on the burners, stoves and tabletop grills over which they are expected to sweat out the details for themselves.

Once the clock starts running, the kitchen spins into a whirlwind of delicious chaos, as students battle to fashion daring new appetizers, entrees and desserts in record time.

One student offered me a nibble of a developing sweet potato-based mole, joking, “Just like Grandma used to make. Except totally different.” Another group hunkered down to weave together seared scallops and fennel fritters. Elsewhere, ambitious dessert-makers discussed plans to construct a molasses-gingerbread cake with fruit sorbet and spun sugar.

With mere seconds to go until the final presentation, one clearly frazzled but still-chipper student coyly smiled and yelled, “Game on!”

Good humor, it seems, is necessary, since the judging turns out to be a grueling two-hour tasting trial where every little detail is analyzed to death.

Award-winning chef R.J. Cooper (Vidalia) peppered his critiques with common-sense lessons students might not have considered while laying out their fantasy menus.

“That’d be $45 at my restaurant. That’s how much duck is there,” Cooper informed one group that erred on the side of generosity whilst plating. He urged the molasses-gingerbread team to be more prescient about the totality of every dish, noting, “It’s too smoky to add a $13 glass of port. That’s the way to think about it.”

A few minutes and several dozen bites later, Cooper found a little something he really liked. The praise came as gentle ribbing. “If you see this at my restaurant next week, you won’t get mad, right?” he asked. An unnerved, would-be chef quickly shot back a warm smile.

Stratford University School of Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management

Location: 7777 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church
Founded: 1981 (culinary); 1994 (hospitality)
Director: Richard R. Shurtz
2008 tuition: From around $24,000 for a diploma to approximately $63,000 for a bachelor’s degree
Program length: Varies from around 12 months (diploma) to three years (bachelor’s)
Total graduates: Approximately 1,400 (culinary) and 300 (hospitality)
Website: www.stratford.edu

From Theory to Practice
During the course of this investigation, at least one prominent restaurateur voiced concerns about the quality of Stratford’s culinary curriculum.

“I know that the more ‘for-profit’ schools have sent out a lot of graduates without the basic understandings of kitchen operations and without fundamental preparation for the realities of restaurant work; e.g., mise en place, discipline, etc.,” the hospitality professional bristled.

None of the Stratford grads we talked to, however, seemed to have any trouble finding work. In fact, several seemed to be on the fast track to success.

Dogwood Tavern executive chef Jeremiah Mahoney had already spent nearly a decade toiling in various kitchens before going on to receive his associate’s in culinary arts from Stratford, but the veteran toque said he still found the experience enlightening.

“I just had a limited knowledge base, and it kind of helped open that up,” he said of his Stratford studies, crediting time spent absorbing the background of different foods and classic cooking styles with greatly expanding his personal repertoire.

“Some of it I already knew and had mastered. Some of it I didn’t know at all.”

Matt Finarelli, a one-time web guru-turned-up-and-coming sous chef—you can read more about the astonishing career 180 on his personal blog—said Stratford helped fill in the gaps that had built up over a lifetime of self-instruction.

“It put names to the things I had sort of already done,” he said of the technical vocabulary he acquired while completing his associate’s in culinary arts.

With degree in hand, Finarelli bounced from Cafe Tirolo (learned to cook high-volume), to Restaurant Vero (gleaned a host of fine-dining techniques) to his current post at Rustico, where he does everything from open the restaurant, handle inventory and purchasing and tackle “anything else that Chef needs.”

His efforts did not go unnoticed by Rustico executive toque Frank Morales, who tapped Finarelli to help draft operating protocols for his forthcoming Logan Circle restaurant (at press time, the establishment remained very much in flux) and hailed his “on-time, can-do mentality.”

“There are some skills that (Finarelli) possesses that no one can actually learn,” Morales said. “He is an incredible asset to this restaurant and will continue to grow within this organization.”

Moreover, Morales said that his experiences working with both L’Academie and Stratford have firmly convinced him that hometown cooking grads are the way to go.

“I prefer local schools to my alma mater,” the CIA alum said of his current hiring inclinations, explaining that locals naturally “understand the likes and dislikes of the area” better than outsiders.

Morales noted, however, that he’d be happy to bring in any CIA grads with roots in the D.C.-Metro area.

Meanwhile, Finarelli urged anyone considering making the move into professional cooking to start by checking out a cooking class or two and then gauging whether they have the fire required to endure life behind the burners.

“It’s a totally different lifestyle,” he counseled. “But you can kind of baby step your way into it.”

(August 2008)

Tags: chef, cook, culinary schools, Education, L’Academie de Cuisine, Stratford University, The International Culinary School at The Art Institute of Washington