In the March 2012 issue of David Chang’s food journal, Lucky Peach (link to ordering the journal, whose contents are not available online), Mark Wilson asks, “Should you go to culinary school?” Wilson attempts to answer the question through interviewing, among others, the likes of The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller (he says go) and Paul Kahan, executive chef of Chicago’s Blackbird, Avec, Publican, and Big Star (he says don’t). The article had us wondering how that question might be answered locally.
St. Louis has three culinary schools—L’Ecole Culinaire, Le Cordon Bleu, and the Culinary Institute of St. Louis— and the Hospitality Studies Program at Forest Park Community College. A range of degrees is offered at the schools, including associates’ degrees and certificates in culinary arts or baking and pastry. Le Cordon Bleu in St. Louis has online programs in culinary operations, hospitality and restaurant management, and culinary management. Ellen Piazza, Chair of the Hospitality Studies Department at Forest Park, said that the culinary arts program is the largest, but interest in the baking and pastry degree has grown tremendously over the last couple of years. In fact, several culinary programs, Forest Park’s among them, have seen an increase in enrollment that coincided with the economy’s downturn. Students range from fresh out of high school to non-traditional, middle-aged career changers. When asked what she would tell a prospective student about the importance of culinary school, Piazza said there are benefits both in school and learning in the kitchen: “Nothing will replace good experience [and] a good education will help you hone those skills.”
While it’s common in many professions to ask for one’s education credentials, chefs rarely talk about their culinary degrees with each other. At Franco, Grace Dinsmoor had no idea Kris Janik went to culinary school even though the two had previously worked together. Before Chris Williams left Franco, its kitchen offered a spectrum of chefs’ diverse backgrounds: Williams attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and could not be happier with his experience; another chef, Kris Janik, went to Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, OR, and remains ambivalent about his time there; and a third chef, Grace Dinsmoor, dove straight into the business at 15 and learned what she knows today by working in several kitchens.
Chris Williams credits “The Culinary,” as it’s called in the industry, with helping him secure an externship at Le Bernardin in New York City and a position as a gastronomy instructor at Universidad de Cuenca in Ecuador. “Culinary school opened a lot of doors for me—I’ve cooked on three continents,” Williams said. When asked what propelled him to apply to school, Williams claimed that watching Mark Del Pietro cook an omelet one Saturday night made him think, “I want to be that good.” His positive experience notwithstanding, Williams advises potential students to keep their eyes open, and to take advantage of the connections and access culinary schools often afford their graduates. Moreover, he suggested what a number of chefs interviewed for this article expressed: get some restaurant experience first and then go to culinary school, but be prepared to pay loans back for a long, long time. When Williams attended the CIA, it cost $45,000 (Wilson’s Lucky Peach article quotes it at $49,980; the New England Culinary Institute is the most expensive program at $51,140). Locally, tuition ranges from Forest Park ($6,072 for area residents for an associate’s in culinary studies) to Le Cordon Bleu ($49,600 for a BA in Culinary Management).
Kris Janik, who recently replaced Williams as the executive chef at Franco, has cooked in several of St. Louis’ notable restaurants, including Robust, Niche, and Monarch. He chose Le Cordon Bleu in Portland because he had a desire to explore the Pacific Northwest, cultivated by watching the TV show Harry and the Hendersons as a child. Janik’s experience prior to arriving in Portland consisted of working at Denny’s—something he was initially embarrassed about as other students threw around famous chefs’ names. Janik soon found out that many of his peers didn’t even know how to cook an egg. On his Denny’s experience, he recalled, “You didn’t get to express any creativity but you sure as hell learned how to keep your line efficient.” While a number of the instructors and classes engaged Janik’s interest, some of the curriculum was designed around busy work with apathetic instructors. Despite those classes, Janik doesn’t regret going to culinary school: “In hindsight, I wish I could have cut those 6 months of worthless classes out and paid half the tuition.” Eleven years later, he’s still paying off student loans (tuition was $22,000 a year when he was there). It appears that Janik is not alone in feeling ambivalent about his experience, as he explained, “In a lot of the kitchens I’ve worked in, you can get made fun of for going to culinary school—for wasting money.” He admits that’s too bad because there’s nothing inherently wrong with school. “It would be nice if it could carry a little more weight,” he concluded.
Six days after Grace Dinsmoor left Modesto, she was itching to get back into a kitchen and wound up at Franco. Dinsmoor entered the profession in her teens thanks to her mom who waitressed at O’Connell’s. A desire to cut her own hair resulted in a deal brokered with her mom: earn her own money and she could do whatever she pleased with her hair. Thus a career was born that included bussing tables at O’Connell’s, cooking in Humphrey’s kitchen, dishing out pasta at Trattoria Marcella, and working her way through Big Sky Café, from busser to sous chef within a couple of years. Dinsmoor credits Tim Mallett and Lisa Slay for teaching her the most about the restaurant business and cooking, respectively. At Big Sky and later at Modesto, she gained experience in all aspects of the business— cooking, food costs, ordering, hiring and firing, and maintaining equipment. Early on, she’d simply ask her superior chef if she could take over particular tasks in order to gain hands-on experience. When queried if it matters whether or not a potential hire has a culinary degree, Dinsmoor said, “Not really.” What most concerns her is passion—is someone cooking because he or she is truly passionate about the food or because it seems like a cool thing to do thanks to TV shows like Top Chef? “You can learn ‘personality’ even starting as a dishwasher working with a chef,” she explained of her practice of bringing inexperienced but enthusiastic employees on at the bottom. She pays it forward: “I would always take a chance on a person . . . because I was taken a chance on.”
(Editor's Note: Tomorrow, in part two, opinions from the chefs of Salume Beddu.)
