CULINARY SCHOOL

After my friends returned from their trip to the east coast recently where they dined at The French Culinary Institute (FCI) in NYC, memories of my culinary school experience came rushing back to the fore. I attended and graduated from FCI, so over the next few postings I'll try to recount life as a student there.

FCI was founded in 1984 by Dorothy Cann Hamilton. The school offers six month professional programs in culinary, pastry and bread arts and also has many non-professional and continuing education courses as well. The professional program exists to prepare cooks to be technically sound entry level kitchen professionals. There are no business classes, intramural sports or any other non-culinary offerings. Many culinary programs in the United States have moved to offer Associate Degrees and entice potential students with a quasi-college experience including dorm life, sports, clubs, student unions and student government. FCI, thankfully, has not gone down that road and remains grounded in teaching culinary technique and kitchen life. The FCI curriculum is based on the 120 cooking and pastry techniques necessary to attain professional cook status in France. Since the United States does not, unfortunately, license cooks, Ms. Hamilton decided to model the school on the proven teaching process in France that prepares student to pass the Certificat d'aptitude Professionnel — CAP. Having been a Chef de Cuisine on three occasions during my career and interviewed and hired many cooks, the FCI program is by far the most realistic in its goals. The parade of applicants I have interviewed from other schools wearing embroidered Bragard (the finest Chef clothing firm in the world) jackets and discussing their culinary philosophy and thoughts on wine pairings with various ingredients that they could barely pronounce was silly if not so sad. The dirty secret American culinary schools don't want anyone to know is that the life of a entry level cook is arduous, your true worth is in your ability to perform repetitive tasks to exacting standards, low paying and no Chef really cares what any new graduate thinks about anything. That is why I chose FCI. No one at FCI misleads the students with grand ideas of what "the life" is all about. The professional kitchen is not for everyone. Like all professions there are pretenders and truly passionate people who dedicate their lives to their craft. "The life" was for me and I loved every minute of it, beginning with new student orientation- November 1994, FCI New York City.

My class all sat nervously in the dinning room of the student run restaurant, L'Ecole while various school administrators presented last minute registration information. Uniforms and equipment were issued along with a locker and ID card. Then the Chef-Instructors and Deans arrived. The nice thing about FCI students was that no matter what profession we had all left to join the food world, we were very in tune with the Who's Who of our new career. This was not so much different than a rabid sports fan knowing every NFL or NBA player and their biography. So, when Chefs Alain Saihac, Andre Soltner and Jacques Pepin walked in laughing and speaking rapid fire French, we all reacted as though Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and John Paxson had entered the room. The three luminaries all spoke to us in a grandfatherly manner about what was available to us and how the program would progress over the next six months [FCI is divided up into three two month phases, basic, prep and L'Ecole]. Then our First Phase Chef-Instructor, Chef Denis spoke. This was not grandfatherly. Chef Denis had cut his teeth in the NYC restaurant scene during the heady 1980's and early 90's. He was from the real world. Over the next two months we would learn of his time cooking at 21 Club and other NYC landmarks for Henry Kissinger, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and a host of movers and shakers- gourmands and not. **SIDE STORY ALERT**- One of Chef Denis' tasks, at 21 Club, was to make pommes souffles for Jackie O. It seems she lunched at 21 once a week and no matter who she was with, always began her lunch with an order of pommes souffles. Every guy in class instantly fell in love with her. How many women in the public eye, like Jackie Kennedy wearing Haute Couture, had the chutzpah to go to 21, dine amongst Wall Street players, jet-setters and NYC socialites and eat a bowl of souffled potato chips before lunch? That's sexy. Chef Denis' parting words to us that morning have stuck in my head ever since. He merely asked a question: "What is the correct answer to the Chef when asked to do something in the kitchen? After some feeble attempts by my classmates to respond, he provided the answer: "Yes Chef." I was in culinary school.