A Jersey boy’s travels to culinary school and back again and other stories from the dark side of the restaurant.

As ’05 winds down and ’06 dawns with anticipation and hopes that only a new year brings, my mind wanders (an all too frequent occurrence).

’06 is a milestone year for me. It marks the twentieth year since I graduated culinary school. Recently I have had the pleasure of teaching at a local culinary school. The experience has brought back a flood of memories some of which were of the horror movie flashback variety. Others showed that I am entering that zone of sounding like my parents. In my case, it manifests itself in the fact that I can’t believe how easy culinary students have it today or the ever popular, “back when I was in school,” which resulted in looks very similar to the ones I must have given my chefs back in the day. And for the record, contrary to what several of my students thought, my day did not include cooking brontosaurus ribs for the Flintstones and the Rubbles.

Culinary schools have changed in the last twenty years as has the restaurant world and the styles of food now served. In my culinary indoctrination, culinary schools do have remarkable similarities to the military. I endured sadistic, old-school chefs that foamed a the mouth like rabid pit bulls at the sight of fresh meat, the Captain Queeg-like Gardemanger chef who, upon seeing my efforts at making mayonnaise, picked up a pitcher of oil and poured in faster than I could possibly whip and snarled “you broke it now fix it.” Or the Asian foods chef who, bearing a strong likeness to the camp commandant in Bridge On the River Kwai, lined up the class at 7am producing a container of well aged and aromatic kim chee declaring “we eat kim cheee now”.

I also had some incredible chefs who inspired me and nurtured my growing passion for food. They believed in the artistry of our business and craft and of its ever changing nature while instilling the need for perfecting technique with a hand on the past, while firmly looking ahead to the future of food.

As for my teaching stint, I probably fell some where in the middle. Not ever having formally taught before but with a firm desire and typical naiveté of the idealistic bleeding heart. Translation, on my first day, the students smelled blood.

They proceeded to treat me the way Ted Nugent would treat Bambi entering his yard on the first day of hunting season. My first days consisted of a student locking him self inside the walk-in, an unannounced health inspection, a smoked turkey demo which set off the smoke alarm, evacuating the school, and my having to play the game of “where are all fifteen of my students now.”

Things eventually settled down and my subsequent classes were more enjoyable. The thought that I was being punished for some of my own culinary school capers soon vanished. The class I taught was in the school’s public restaurant and since the reservations were modest and I had fifteen students, I thought it would be a walk in the park. It was – if the park was located in downtown Baghdad. My last class started with ten students and by day three, I was lucky if I had 6 students showing up on a daily basis. But instead of being harder, it was actually smoother than some of my larger classes. Seeing the students’ pride when they turned out some remarkably good food made me a little less distraught over the fate of my chosen profession as I realized the Toque (large funny white chefs hat to outsiders) was being passed on to some very qualified young men and women. At the end of my last class, I truly felt that the passion and love of the strange and cruel world of restaurants is indeed going into the hands of some talented young soon to be chefs.

One little aside here: Culinary schools, in my belief, do not graduate chefs. Becoming a chef is a lifelong pursuit of the passions and skills of the profession that cannot be acquired in two short years, but culinary school gives you a quantum leap forward in that journey.

Until next month – Bon Appetit.