[Sca-cooks] cooking schools

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Steve wrote:
>
> I've heard from people that have been to CIA that it is the equivalent to
> Culinary Boot Camp.
>
> Æduin, who once dreamed of going there
>
> At 11:25 PM 06/05/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >Johnston and Wales in Norfolk, Va (Since I do live in Richmond) or the CIA in
> >Hyde Park in New York. I haven't searched around but if you know any culinary
> >school's around Va, let me know.
> >
> >Misha

The Culinary Institute of America offers a tough program, but it has an
extremely high rate of professional success.

The fact is that the restaurant industry is _extremely_ competitive,
usually highly stressful, and low in profits for any but the best. Being
a chef requires the ability to cook well, but also the ability to cook
well while simultaneously planning twelve other projects, which in turn
will be cooked while you are planning 144 more projects. It can be
backbreaking and often dangerous physical labor, as well having perhaps
the worst hours of any industry I can think of. There's nothing quite
like being the low person on the totem pole in your first kitchen job
when the exec has allowed everyone but you to leave early, and you find
yourself alone in the kitchen at, say, 2AM on Christmas or New Year's
morning, waiting for the last dessert orders. Which actually isn't so
bad because while things are quiet, you get to discover that the other
cooks, in their anxiety to leave, haven't cleaned the place all that
well, so you have plenty to do. Unfair, you say? So what's your point?
You work there, don't you?

In short, it can be an extremely hard life, and while there's nothing
quite like the thrill of doing it successfully (perhaps a bit like
painting the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel while riding the nose cone of
an ICBM), I'd be suspicious of a culinary school that wasn't something
of a boot camp.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com