It used to be that if you wanted to become a chef, you were expected to go to cooking school in Paris. There you learned classic technique, the organization of the French kitchen and discipline under the critical eye of French instructors. And when you returned to the United States, you were practically guaranteed to land a job at a top restaurant.
But over the last decade, the culinary world has changed. Cuisines fused, and American kitchens were transformed from French food factories into dens of creativity. Restaurants began relying on local produce and a home-grown sensibility. And as they prospered, they created a new demand for chefs that a handful of schools abroad could not satisfy. Cooking schools have since sprouted all over this country–there are now almost 800–and French cuisine is only part of the curriculum.
Today, when we go out to eat, the dishes we order more often reflect the values of schools like the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., or Johnson & Wales in Providence, R.I., than of any revered Paris institution. Consider the July issue of Food & Wine magazine, which hails the 10 new chefs it considers the best in the country: Seven were trained in the United States.
But nowhere is the break with the past clearer than in a comparison of the Culinary Institute, the most influential school in the U.S., with its counterpart in France, Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Le Cordon Bleu has not wavered in its allegiance to French cooking–choux pastry and beurre blanc are as much in its blood as ever, and its cuisine focus remains purely French.
A tale of two schools
The Culinary Institute teaches that, too, but it is more interested in introducing students to the world of cooking, the business of running a restaurant and even how to cope with it all, with classes like stress reduction and personal health.
The institute’s campus is on a hill, high over the Hudson River in what was a Jesuit seminary before cooks wielding whisks descended upon it in 1972.
Starting at 7:30 a.m., the campus crawls with some 2,100 students, knife cases in tote and toques bobbing. In 36 spacious and modern teaching kitchens, the air is filled with the sounds of mixers whirring, knives tapping on cutting boards and the occasional roar of an instructor. Some students are fresh-faced, right out of high school, some are grayish–an unusual mix with an average starting age of 23. Yet there is a powerful feeling of solidarity: Everyone is here to cook.
The 103-year-old Le Cordon Bleu looks a bit worn in comparison. It is squeezed into a narrow building in a quiet residential area of the Left Bank in Paris. The classrooms are less modern than the Culinary Institute’s. But the atmosphere is more personal, with a student-to-instructor ratio of 10 to 1, compared with 17 to 1 at the Culinary Institute. There is no library or restaurant, not even a school cafeteria.
But Le Cordon Bleu doesn’t aspire to a campus environment. A temple is more like it, with students as worshipers who have made the pilgrimage to learn the secret of cooking and to take it back home.
“Let’s face it,” said Lindsay Gott, a student from San Francisco, “it’s Paris, and the enthusiasm about food that’s here, you feel it.”
It is certainly something the Culinary Institute lacks. Tucked away in upstate New York, it suffers like many other campuses from insularity. Students have little exposure to real restaurants. There is a wine club, an ice-carving club, even a cigar club, but few field trips to restaurants in New York City.
The institute applies a university philosophy to its curriculum too. It offers a 21-month program for an associate’s degree and a 38-month program for a bachelor’s degree. As cooking schools go, that is a lengthy commitment. (Le Cordon Bleu’s program lasts nine months.) But students at the institute are earning a college degree–an associate in occupational studies or a bachelor of professional studies–approved by the state Board of Regents.
“Nowadays, just to be a great culinarian isn’t enough,” said Tim Ryan, senior vice president of the school. “People need to have the business acumen, the business skills.”
So bachelor’s degree candidates must complete courses in cuisine and pastry, management, economics and psychology. “We do want to stress balance and healthier living, so people stay healthier, livelier and in touch with their creative forces,” Ryan said.
Students also spend four weeks at the school’s recently opened Greystone campus in St. Helena, Calif., visiting wineries, restaurants and farms.
The bachelor’s program, a school spokesman said, is a response to the change in perception of chefs. In census polls during the ’70s, a chef was considered a domestic servant. Today, chefs are categorized as professionals.
French focus
There are no such notions to put to rest in Paris, where being a chef has a long tradition of respect. Le Cordon Bleu’s three-semester program is carefully designed for students to master just one thing: French technique.
Students–whose average age is 26–are first taught the fundamentals, from technique to palate education. The second semester focuses on French regional cooking, and the third refines skills and lets students unleash their own creativity on classic dishes.
Never do instructors teach how to run a restaurant. “We don’t play with academics,” said Andre Cointreau, president of the school. “We are only dealing with hands-on culinary training at the highest level.”
“I really care about cooking,” said Frankie Carl, 45, a former homemaker from New York City in her final semester. “I don’t care about the business side of it. I’d hire someone for that.”
In some ways, Le Cordon Bleu seems frozen in time. A brochure showcases pulled-sugar works and fish en gelee. It is difficult to imagine such antiquities enticing anyone to become a chef. Yet the school has a waiting list and has just opened a fourth outpost, in Australia, adding to those in London, Tokyo and Ottawa.
Le Cordon Bleu’s greatest strengths are its site and its short program. Some students, especially career-changers, value how quickly one can earn a degree.
The grand diplome in cuisine and pastry can be earned in 12 months, including a 3-month restaurant internship. And in that year, the student will come out with a thorough understanding of a cuisine. Not just any cuisine, but one whose techniques form the base of most Western cooking.
The Culinary Institute’s approach–introducing students to the world of cooking, rather than mastering it–is both the school’s edge and its fault. Students see what the culinary world can offer but it is merely a starting point.
