Epicurean Edge
As The Culinary Institute of America turns 60, a new era dawns for students of culinary education.
By Kate Leahy, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 5/15/2006
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Wearing black-and-white-checked trousers and white, double-breasted monogrammed jackets, backpacks slung over their shoulders and black knife rolls tucked under arms, these cooks are as ready for the classroom as they are for the kitchen.
They aren’t yet chefs—some never even intend to be—but they represent the faces of American culinary education, a segment showing rapid growth despite rising tuition costs, time commitment and a future that promises relentless hard work and long hours.
At its fundamental level, a culinary education supplies graduates with an understanding of kitchen science, terminology, techniques and sanitation. While not enough to turn a pantry cook into a Certified Master Chef, it allows students to quickly establish culinary foundations. But a focus on culinary skills is not enough for schools to attract students, many of whom have come to expect state-of-the-art kitchen facilities, wine classes and international programs as part of the package.
Not that the pool for culinary students is shrinking. Enrollment has better than doubled in a decade. More than 90,000 students attend programs today, compared with 35,000 in 1996, according to Dorlene Kaplan, editor of The Guide to Cooking Schools. And professional programs continue to pop up everywhere to meet the seemingly endless demand for culinary education even though tuition increases every year, Kaplan says.
“There’s an awfully strong mesmerizing effect about this industry,” says Bill Reynolds, provost of Washburne Culinary Institute in Chicago. “They want to be in it so badly that they see the glamorous side of it, the celebrity side, I guess.”
There’s no real prospect of a labor shortage for culinary graduates who enter an industry with an insatiable appetite for hourly workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), jobs for chefs, cooks and other foodservice employees will be abundant through 2014. Yet the area that promises the most growth—casual family dining—is not a segment known for serving consommé, a standard culinary-school skills test.
With median hourly incomes for cooks falling between $7.79 and $11.14, according to the BLS, graduates looking to repay student loans also face financial difficulties. While chef salaries are higher, it’s commonly accepted that high-paying chef positions require years of honing skills in lower-paying positions. To compound matters, graduates are entering an industry that does not require formal education.
To overcome these hurdles and maintain student enrollment and satisfaction for the long term requires forward-thinking strategies: Culinary schools need to be invaluable to their students and to the industry.
Celebrating its 60th year of instruction, The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is meeting this challenge with progressive curriculum changes. Headquartered in a former Jesuit seminary in Hyde Park in New York’s Hudson Valley, the institute evokes Ivy League standards and confidence. Indeed, offering advanced degrees is all part of the institution’s plan. With more emphasis on business management, the CIA strives to provide students opportunities for attractive returns on their educational investments. At the CIA, with its motto “The World’s Premier Culinary College,” it no longer is enough for future professionals to know how to prepare oeufs à la neige and sole marguery.
This wasn’t always the case. When CIA President Tim Ryan graduated from the school in 1977, he recalls that his options were nearly limited to working in kitchens of country clubs and hotels, places where being able to make hollandaise helped get you in the door. Not so today, where careers can take graduates into boardrooms, television studios and beyond. While this is promising for culinary educators, it demands that schools develop forward-thinking programs that embrace new dynamics in the industry.
Culinary schools are challenged not only to broaden culinary skills classes to embrace different cultures, but also to expand academic offerings. While the CIA’s two-year associate degree has the largest number of students, the decade-old baccalaureate program is the school’s fastest-growing educational segment, increasing from 128 students in 2000 to 472 in 2005. Kaplan notes that more schools than ever are adding baccalaureate programs.
Dr. Kathy Merget, CIA dean of liberal and management studies who helped developed the bachelor’s degree program, speculates that within five years bachelor’s programs will be the mainstay of culinary education. She also notes that the school’s initial reason to add a bachelor’s degree stemmed from industry demand. “It’s the student who can cook and can talk business comfortably,” says Merget. “It’s no longer a strict food conversation. For marketability, it’s phenomenal.”
As more students look to the CIA for a four-year college experience, the school is broadening its emphasis from culinary classes to a well-rounded liberal-arts education. Noting the importance of helping students develop career trajectories (see graduate profiles from 1980, 1990 and 2005 on pages 60, 62 and 64), Ryan envisions master’s degree programs and specialized education paths, such as a major in research and development. This follows the trend in other higher education segments, where specialization is the new norm. Along with this shift is a change in what careers CIA alumni will aspire to—and it won’t always require wielding a knife or wearing a monogrammed jacket.
The CIA’s new line of thinking caught the attention of author Michael Ruhlman. Ruhlman, whose 1997 book “The Making of a Chef” (Henry Holt & Co.) took readers through a CIA associate degree program, feels the differences between the CIA he became familiar with a decade ago and the one that Ryan is planning are significant. Ruhlman also noticed that the school known for setting the standard in culinary education—an area traditionally considered vocational—no longer wants to be called a trade school.
“A lot fewer want to be chefs,” he says of current students whom he met while writing his forthcoming book “The Reach of a Chef.” “They don’t know what they want to do, but they can go in and do anything.” With opportunities in the culinary world flourishing, “it’s no longer enough to know how to cook,” he acknowledges.
Meanwhile, the school is expanding its other assets. Its St. Helena, Calif., continuing-education campus, Greystone, is adding an associate degree program. Expansion opportunities into other states also are being examined. But fast growth is not in Ryan’s plans. “We’re not trying to be the biggest,” he says. “We’re trying to be the best.”
The class of 1980: Robert Zitto
What: President-Owner, JEM Consulting Group Inc.; Member, Board of Directors, CIA |
When Robert Zitto reflects on his career’s progression, he starts by saying “I think I got lucky.”
For someone who has made a comfortable living in Las Vegas, few phrases could be more fitting. Zitto was lucky to meet Steve Wynn. He was lucky to get into the Vegas dining scene long before it was trendy. And luck had a hand in landing him a job as the Golden Nugget’s youngest vice president of food and beverage.
But like most good-luck stories, it wasn’t because he had a rabbit foot in his pocket. Growing up in Piscataway, N.J., Zitto started learning about the foodservice industry early by earning pocket change at his grandfather’s bakery. By 13, he was making money washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant. Working throughout high school, he soon set his sights on the CIA. But prior to President Ferdinand Metz taking over the helm in 1980, it was not the polished institution it is today. “When I was there, it was a lot of hard work and it was a very good school, but it was also known as a party school,” he says. “They really cleaned that up.”
Still, European-chef-taught classes were hardly easy. Zitto remembers a nearly 80-year-old French chef-instructor who would take a fork and poke students who weren’t standing up straight. “He was just a tyrant,” recalls Zitto. Another made Zitto wear on his shoulder crêpes that were less-than-perfect. Instructors today, he notes, are a lot more likely to be culinary graduates and have a better sense of how to teach.
The mild hazing, however unsavory, may have had some benefits for Zitto—he certainly didn’t scare easily. While working in Atlantic City, N.J., as the executive chef of Charlie’s in the Golden Nugget after graduating from the CIA, he met Wynn, who nudged the young chef to come to Las Vegas and open restaurants for him at the original Golden Nugget, the casino complex in which Wynn then had a controlling interest. Zitto speculates that Wynn took a liking to him because he wasn’t afraid to speak up—respectfully—when others stayed quiet. “I wasn’t a yes person if I didn’t think something was right,” he says.
Zitto soon become vice president of food and beverage for the Las Vegas Golden Nugget, went on to open Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Ledyard, Conn., and returned to Nevada to open Paris Las Vegas. Before leaving his post as senior vice president of food and beverage for the Paris, Bally’s and Flamingo casinos in 2004, he was responsible for more than $240 million in sales. His experience of opening and operating casino restaurants served as a background for his current position as president and owner of Las Vegas-based JEM Consulting Group Inc., a foodservice design firm that assists clients with restaurant conceptualization, kitchen design, equipment specifications and operational assistance.
Zitto, who mentors students considering culinary education, has watched the school grow and evolve.
One aspect that has changed for the better in Zitto’s mind is the school’s appreciation for Las Vegas. For a while, the CIA seemed to Zitto to be dismissive of Sin City and its casino restaurants. Not so today. “Now it is a place that they really like and the school encourages students to come here,” he says.
CIA President Tim Ryan considers careers like Zitto’s to be models for ambitious CIA students. “Bob Zitto is a great example of success in the casino industry,” says Ryan.
The class of 1990: J. Bryce Whittlesey
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While American chefs don’t need to take on daunting apprenticeships in France to learn how to cook, for J. Bryce Whittlesey, doing so was a rite of passage.
“If you want to fly like an eagle, you don’t surround yourself with turkeys. That was one of the reasons I went to France,” Whittlesey says. “If I wanted to be a great chef, I had to surround myself with great chefs that could possibly be mentors.”
Then again, Whittlesey may have done it to get the travel bug out of his system. The son of a Caterpillar executive, he was born in Mexico and had lived throughout Latin America before moving to Florida when he was 10. His travel and education has made him who he is today, a multilingual family man (his wife is French and his children speak French at home) and executive chef at the stately Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox, Mass. He also stays connected to his alma mater, recruiting CIA externs to work in his kitchen.
Long before he landed in the kitchens of a handful of Michelin-starred restaurants, he started building a culinary foundation with a part-time job in a French bakery where he learned how to roll croissants. “I don’t know if it was just a hobby at the time or if instinctively I was drawn to food. To me, when I look that far back, I see that I was drawn to it. I grew up loving food.”
Attracted to the CIA for its history of producing successful graduates as well as its number of Certified Master Chefs on staff, he enrolled after finishing high school and began classes in 1988 when he was 18 years old.
The 1980s had seen a polishing of the school’s curriculum, the closing of an on-campus diner and the opening of then-radical restaurant concepts highlighting American regional cuisine and healthful cooking. Yet the CIA in the late 1980s was far from the bustling college campus that it is today. Nor was it normal for college-bound high-school students to choose culinary school instead. “There were not really activities or hobbies or anything to keep you busy,” Whittlesey reminisces. “It wasn’t something you would think of as being a college or a university. It was really a culinary program.”
Whittlesey easily remembers many highlights while attending the CIA, such as an experimental food class, his graduation ceremony, where Jean-Louis Palladin reigned as guest speaker, made the biggest impression. He likens Palladin’s presence at the graduation to the school’s dedication to culinary arts.
After graduating, however, Whittlesey knew he needed to learn more. Classrooms limited the time he could spend mastering skills but increased his desire to learn. That motivation drove him to France, where for five years he says he was yelled at, scalded and worked until he collapsed at restaurants such as the two-star Michel Rostang in Paris. Returning to the states, he feels that it’s his obligation to teach American cooks who work for him the culinary techniques he learned in France—while leaving behind the poor management techniques he witnessed.
He’s a little unsure of how he’d find the CIA today as a student, preferring the disciplined, isolated campus he remembers. Yet he admits that new additions to the campus, such as its fitness center, make the school more marketable. He advised students to take the time to learn as much as they can while surrounded with all of the CIA’s resources.
“Just because you file through that program, it doesn’t mean that you’ll all go to great places,” says Whittlesey. “It means that you went back to your chef-instructors, you set up meetings, you understood the classes, you spent time in the library reading up and compounding the efforts of the school.”
The class of 2005: Nathaniel Rhodes
Where: Honolulu, Hawaii |
Nathaniel Rhodes exemplifies the new culinary school graduate, someone whose fascination with cooking stems not only from family, but also from the Food Network. His ambitions are much grander than owning his own restaurant, and he’s even been reprimanded by family and friends for not thinking big enough (these days, the big idea is to open his own hotel in Costa Rica). To help advance his grand plan, he used education to build a foundation not only in culinary technique but also in networking.
But perhaps the most notable difference about Rhodes is how he initially avoided a career in the foodservice industry, thinking that cooking was no way to make a living.
Growing up in St. Louis, Rhodes was attracted to the kitchen early on, loving the mess an afternoon making chicken and dumplings left behind. His first foodservice job bussing tables began somewhat ominously: After dropping a tray of dirty dishes on his way to the kitchen, he was asked to move his enthusiasm to the salad station. The line was a better setting for his skills and he quickly turned into his chef’s right-hand man. Yet when it came to deciding what to do after high school, culinary education wasn’t the first thought that came to mind even though his managers suggested it would be a good fit.
“I talked with my parents and with my friends and they looked at me and said, ‘Why’? You know, you’re flipping burgers,” he says. “I was still skeptical myself.”
Rhodes took computer-programming courses at a local community college while earning paychecks with customer-service jobs. It took a Wolfgang Puck special on the Food Network to rekindle a professional interest in the kitchen. “I saw how he was able to talk to the guests. I saw all this creativity. I saw all of these things that I wanted, that I didn’t think I could get from cooking.”
He looked into culinary programs and soon found himself visiting the CIA’s Hyde Park campus. Enthusiasm and camaraderie—from the students and chef-instructors— stood out in his mind.
Soon after the visit, Rhodes applied and at age 21 started learning lessons in humility. First there was the time in the classroom where he thought he knew the answer to every question. Then there was the lesson in time management, where a practical had him scrambling to make a hollandaise, whip and bake potatoes, and cook asparagus for bone-in pork loin in seven minutes.
But the hard knocks didn’t stop him from gaining notice from administration. While he considered leaving after he completed the associate degree, he was beckoned back with a scholarship covering half his tuition costs for the bachelor’s degree program. “Nate is extremely resourceful and exuberant. He set the tone for the group,” recalls Rhodes’ former teacher Stephanie Murphy, an assistant professor of economics and accounting at the CIA.
By the time Rhodes graduated, he had been student body president, president of the Black Culinary Society, graduation speaker and group leader for his class. Being in leadership positions gave him plenty of opportunities to meet industry professionals who got him to think about the variety of professions within the foodservice industry. “Meeting those people from all those industries, I was just thinking too small,” he acknowledges.
With a hotel in Costa Rica the ultimate goal, he set his sights on the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki, Hawaii, where at 26 he holds a position as a manager of room service and Hyatt restaurants Terrace Grill and Musashi. Now his career depends on his performance. “The CIA will definitely open the door for you. If you have the right personality, you can get just about wherever you want to go,” Rhodes says. “But after the initial personality, you’re only as good as your last task, your last job.”
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