JoAnn Relf is having so much fun in the kitchen at Chicago’s Washburne Culinary Institute that she has trouble remembering she is in school. “Compared to college it doesn’t feel like being in school,” the 45-year-old Chicago resident said. “I’m learning, but I feel like I’m hanging out with a bunch of friends and having fun cooking.”
To be at a stove is a dream come true for Relf, who took advantage of a severance offer to chuck an unsatisfying 15-year telecommunications career for a new life in the culinary field.
She isn’t looking back.
“The people I used to work with say I’m so happy now,” Relf said.
More and more people like Relf are hoping to put a smile on their face by donning a white toque and brandishing an outsized whisk in kitchen classrooms across Chicago.
Culinary programs are “hot right now,” said Nancy Rotunno, executive director of the Institute of Culinary Arts at Robert Morris College’s DuPage County campus in Aurora.
Just a year old, the culinary program is poised to expand to Robert Morris’ campuses in Chicago this fall and in Orland Park by the end of 2005. Rotunno said the demand is fueled by the popularity of television’s Food Network, the interest in celebrity chefs and a growing appetite for food.
Numbers are up, too, at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. Between 2001 and 2003, the number of students ages 25 to 50 jumped 74 percent. Nearly 40 percent of students enrolled for the fall 2003 semester at CHIC were age 25 or older, with 63 students ranging in age from 35 to 49. Enrollment in the culinary program at Triton College in River Grove is up 9.8 percent to 2004 from 2003, with the median student age hovering at close to 30. And Kendall College has sold its longtime Evanston campus to move into the former Sara Lee Corp. research facility on Chicago’s Goose Island because of increased enrollment and the need for more program space.
Career-changers “know what they want,” said Kevin Appleton, executive chef of the Robert Morris program, himself a man who switched to cooking after a com-puter career.
“They are already motivated, have a professional demeanor and a good work ethic.”
Culinary school officials say that most older students arrive with visions of owning their own restaurant or catering business. But the reality of long hours, low pay or lack of funding, hot stoves and heavy equipment can take a toll.
If young people find the pace grueling, imagine what it’s like to be middle-aged.
“You don’t have the physical skills you might have had when younger,” admitted John Leonard of Evanston, a 50-year-old student at Kendall College’s culinary arts program who previously worked around the world as an advertising executive. But Leonard said that age does have its advantages.
“I found my understanding and my knowledge far outstripped my ability to do it fast,” he said. “Compared to the home cook I’m blindingly fast, but I will never be as fast as my young colleagues.”
Not everyone’s a chef
Relf came to Washburne with hopes of becoming a caterer. When she learned what the job actually entailed, she began retooling her hopes and has decided to become a personal chef. To build a customer base, she’s planning on throwing a “tasting party” for her neighbors in a 700-unit apartment complex.
“I want to let people know I’m here,” Relf said.
A number of mid-life culinary students are attempting to merge old skills and new interests and in so doing are teaching cooking schools a lesson.
“One thing our second-career people do is push us to look at food service from a broader prospective,” said Christopher Koetke, associate dean of Kendall’s school of culinary arts. “Food service is not limited to restaurants. Food service encompasses consulting, research and development, food manufacturers, personal chefs, catering and on and on it goes.”
Showing the way is Denise Norton, a 36-year-old alumna of CHIC. She went from being an unsatisfied certified public accountant to owner of Flavour Cooking School in Forest Park in just four years, earning herself a place on the institute’s Web page as a success story.
Norton knew from her accounting career that she had the skills to be a good teacher. What she needed was more cooking expertise. She enrolled at the institute.
“I learned the framework, which is an important thing to know when you want to teach other people,” she said.
Others looking outside the conventional restaurant scenario include Mark Furlong and Holly Kopec, two Kendall students.
An IBM employee currently on a leave of absence, the 53-year-old Furlong wants to feed the elderly. Specifically, he wants to cater to the gourmet tastes of aging Baby Boomers who don’t want to give up their high standards as they move into retirement communities and assisted living complexes.
Kopec, 31, worked eight years for Sprint plugging companies into various types of wireless phones. The Chicago resident now wants to connect children and families to nutritious meals.
Sacrifices to become a chef
Yet the dream of working in a restaurant remains bright for some.
Formerly a marketing assistant with a bank, Jose Llopiz of Chicago wants to open a Mexican restaurant offering authentic regional cuisine. Training at Washburne is helping him make the dream a reality, the 36-year-old said, while a part-time job at The Gap helps make ends meet.
Busy developing a business plan for his restaurant venture, Llopiz knows from his bank experience to look elsewhere for financial help. Financial institutions won’t give him a loan, he said, because he hasn’t been in the kitchen long enough.
“I’ll have to fund it myself,” he said.
For Frankie Brown, the job search was over before it began.
The Washburne student, who spent 13 years working her way up the fast-food restaurant ladder before burning out, was just hired to be the kitchen manager at a new pub/restaurant in Kissimmee, Fla.
Brown was one of the institute’s students assigned to work as kitchen assistants during the National Restaurant Association show held in Chicago in May. Her work over five days was so impressive that on the final day of the show she was offered a job.
The only catch was moving to Florida. Brown, 40, was willing, and will relocate with the four youngest of her six children this fall.
Career-changers like Brown enjoy their new roles but admit it comes after lots of hard work and some adjustments in income, lifestyle and expectations.
Leonard, for example, sold his house and moved the family into a smaller residence. The Kendall College student and his wife paid off their debts, sold about one-third of their possessions and slashed their budget by 30 percent.
“Reinvention is painful in a lot of ways but it is liberating at the same time,” he said. “It forces you to learn new things.”
