Cooking Up an Education

Culinary careers are in vogue these days, but do you really have what it takes?

 

Not everyone can grow up to become a celebrity chef. But the popularity of the Food Network’s cooking competitions and similar shows has significantly raised the profile of a small number of chefs and hospitality professionals, while focusing a glitzy spotlight on the restaurant industry. Becoming famous in the foodie world, however, isn’t usually the reason students give for enrolling in the degree and certificate programs offered by North Bay culinary schools.

“More often than not, our students are hoping to have their own business by opening a restaurant or a catering company, because most of them are entrepreneurial in spirit,” says Maggie Chutz, assistant chef instructor at the Napa Valley Cooking School, a unit of Napa Valley College. Several blocks removed from the hustle and bustle of downtown St. Helena, the school accepts only 20 students per year in its certificate program, with an annual tuition of $20,000.

“We’re not thrilled with prospective students who watch those TV shows and then decide they want to go into this line of work,” adds Barbara Alexander, the school’s executive chef. Together with Chutz, Alexander rigorously screens students’ applications and also encourages them to spend a day observing lectures and classes in the teaching kitchen, so they can see what learning the culinary arts is really like before they commit.

Students can sense that Chutz and Alexander don’t place much importance on training future “celebrity” chefs seeking a glamorous career. “Occasionally, we have people who come in for the tour and then realize our program isn’t just for fun,” says Chutz. Alexander says the school accepts students who are passionate about what they do and less concerned about what they’ll earn. “This is still not always a well paying career, and only a very small number of culinary professionals make it into the big time.”

Not for the faint of heart

There’s no question that TV shows about cooking and restaurant life are viewed as entertainment, and that “rock star” chefs have become cultural icons because of it, explains Betsy Fischer, one of five full-time faculty members in the Culinary Arts department at Santa Rosa Junior College (she also manages the department’s Culinary Career Center).

“That accounts for a big increase in our school enrollment over the past few years, but it’s a double-edged sword,” she says. “Food Network shows aren’t an accurate picture of our industry, but [because of them] people look at restaurants as cool places to be—and I can’t say that’s a bad thing. But it gives some people a potential career idea that really isn’t for them, because it can be low paying and a lot of hard work. Earning a certificate or degree in the culinary arts is not for the faint of heart.”

Fortunately, says Fischer, the faculty rarely encounters students who have dreams of stardom. “But we do have to calm a few people down from time to time and remind them that they’ll be saying ‘Yes, chef’ a lot out there in the real world. They have to be capable of taking direction in the kitchen because, as in most careers, everyone starts out on the low rung of the ladder.”

The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone (CIA), on the north edge of St. Helena, has 240 to 300 students on campus at any one time (plus an additional 60 to 120 off-campus fulfilling externship requirements). They usually don’t have stars in their eyes about reaching celebrity status, although many CIA alumni have gone on to major foodie fame in recent years, including Michael Chiarello, Rocco DeSpirito, Charlie Palmer and Anthony Bourdain.

“At one point, being a chef was considered a blue-collar job, but it’s been raised to a level of artistry where you really do need a degree now,” says Tyffani Peters, media relations specialist for the CIA in St. Helena. “One of the great things the CIA offers here that other culinary schools don’t is a full block of wine education to our degree students, and how wine is paired with food and used in the cuisine. Being in the heart of Napa Valley, that’s a big part of what we teach in our associate degree and certificate programs.”

Real-world experience

SRJC’s Culinary Arts program awards certificates of completion in five areas: culinary arts, baking and pastry, front house operations, dining room service and restaurant management. Two associate degrees are also offered in culinary arts and restaurant management. Courses are held in eight-week blocks during the fall, spring and summer sessions, with approximately 500 students enrolled during the fall and spring semesters, and about 175 in the summer. Many are part-time students working at part-time jobs.

Fischer says SRJC’s culinary arts program has recently seen more people signing up to become involved in the fresh, local and seasonal food movement, while baking and pastry is another field of study that’s booming in popularity. “Baking is a balance of science and art, and interest in that part of our program has been growing every year,” she adds.

SRJC culinary courses take place at the B. Robert Burdo Culinary Arts Center across Mendocino Avenue from the main campus. The 22,000-square-foot facility, which opened in 2012, also features a 100-seat cafe and a retail bakery, where the students hone their skills in real-world professional cooking, baking and serving.

“The café serves from 75 to 100 people per day, all handled by students,” says Fischer, adding that students in the café, both front and back of the house, experience the reality of restaurant life. “It’s like their own internship, where they interface with the public, learn how to handle someone sending a meal back and so on. It teaches them what to expect in both the front and back of the house.”

Networking is crucial

More than 300 of the students in SRJC’s Culinary Arts program gain further real-world experience by participating in any number of the hundreds of special events every year in Sonoma and Napa counties, such as charity fund-raisers, private dinner parties, wedding receptions and food and wine tastings. Students who work events are hired by the client for $15 to $20 per hour and paid directly (the school doesn’t receive any part of their wages). If they do choose to work events, they must attend a special orientation and meet certain qualifications, and then receive—and continue to receive—positive reviews from the clients they serve.

“We started that program about six years ago, and it’s been extremely popular,” says Fischer. “It gets our students out into the community and on the networking track, and it’s come back to us tenfold in relationships with our local restaurant owners, wineries and community members. They feel good about hiring a JC student––we receive great positive feedback.”

The culinary industry, she explains, relies heavily on networking. “And we work with more than 350 employers to help place students in jobs. I like to say we’re dancing as fast as we can to not only get them through our program but to get them into the workplace.”

If a student wishes to pursue all five certificates in the JC’s culinary arts program, says Fischer, “the whole kit and caboodle will cost less than $7,500, much less than private culinary schools. It can be difficult for some people to spend $40,000 to $60,000 on a culinary education and then land a $10-per-hour job.”

Laziness not tolerated

Students at Napa Valley Cooking School, located in a semi-rural setting just off Silverado Trail, tend to their own flock of about 30 heritage chickens and two fully operational beehives, which supply fresh eggs and honey for their classes. Chutz says the school is run like a well-oiled professional restaurant kitchen, and laziness is not tolerated.

“We have only one start date each year and only 20 seats, so students can’t come to class tired or hung over,” she explains. “We can’t have people dropping out, either––we need all 20 slots full. We’re demanding on the front end, and students see the value of that when they apply, because they’re paying $100 per day for this education.”

Chutz, an alumnus of the school, also helps new students find housing in Napa Valley. “I came from out of state [to attend the school] and found that was the most stressful part of my experience, so I have a special place in my heart for those who come from far away.”

After earning their certificates, students of Napa Valley Cooking School have gone on to a wide variety of assignments. “We have many who go into private cheffing, and some find that’s where the money is,” says Chutz. Some have also gone on to work at Michelin-rated Meadowood Resort and the French Laundry. Others can go in another direction entirely—into the research and development field, for instance, testing recipes and the shelf life of products, according to Alexander.

CIA requires externships

The CIA in St. Helena offers two associate degrees, one in the culinary arts and another in baking and pastry arts––each requiring 21 months to complete. An externship midway through a student’s two-year education at the CIA is a requirement, when they must spend 18 weeks and at least 600 hours working full-time in sometimes demanding restaurant kitchens. Many fulfill their externships nearby in the valley, while others choose New York City, Los Angeles or other national or international destinations. There are career services representatives at each CIA campus—there are four: Hyde Park, N.Y.; St. Helena; San Antonio, Tex.; and Singapore—who work directly with the students at their location.

“They come back to us with a renewed appreciation for the school, and with more confidence and additional skill sets,” says Amy Tormey, senior career services officer for the CIA. The budding chefs round out their degree by working in the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant on the CIA campus, which is the final class for an AOS culinary degree.

The school’s accelerated culinary arts certificate and accelerated wine and beverage certificate are 30-week programs aimed at professionals already working in the hospitality or food science industries who want to gain additional skills and increase their career marketability. They’re also popular for recent graduates with a bachelor’s degree in hospitality or related fields.

An education at CIA doesn’t come cheap: Freshmen in the associate degree programs will pay approximately $31,940 their first year, and an additional $30,790 to complete their sophomore year. The 30-week certificate programs cost approximately $31,625. CIA also offers a limited supply of residence hall housing onsite and nearby, which can cost from $2,860 to $4,425 per semester. The school is approved for GI bill funding, and is receiving an influx of returning war veterans seeking a culinary degree, says Peters.

“As a not-for-profit college, every dime we earn goes right back into the students’ education,” she adds. “We’re hugely dependent on our donors and alumni.”

All these schools enroll students of all ages, from recent high school graduates to much older career changers. “Napa Valley Cooking School can have a very mixed group of students, from age 18 to people in their 50s,” says Alexander. “We get a lot of older people who are exploring new avenues for their future, such as running a bed and breakfast inn.”

SRJC’s Fischer concurs. “Most of our students are in their mid- to late twenties, but we have had many 40- to 60-year-olds, and we’ve seen quite a few retired police officers, bankers, real estate agents—even retired physicians—who want to pursue the culinary arts because they always had a passion for it. So we counsel them from the beginning that our professional program isn’t play cooking, and they have to start with the safety and sanitation classes and work up from there.”

Classes for consumers

On evenings and weekends, North Bay culinary schools also offer consumer classes for cooks of all skill levels who want to spend a few hours mastering a new kitchen technique or try their hand at specialized skills.

SRJC is in the process of bringing back many recreational cooking classes that had disappeared during severe state budget cuts. Some recent offerings have included four-hour, hands-on sessions on healthy Thai, gluten-free and Asian cooking, and how to make pesto, hummus, chutney and flatbreads. These “specialty and ethnic classes” take place at the school’s Culinary Arts Center, generally on Saturdays (you can find dates and pricing at www.santarosa.edu/communityed).

Through its recreational programs, Napa Valley Cooking School offers instruction in preparing classic sauces, Turkish food, Korean barbecue, vegetarian Asian cuisine, dim sum and Vietnamese street food, and even some classes for kids and teens, among others. Classes cost from $60 to $95 and last two to four hours on Saturdays or weeknights.

CIA is perhaps best known for its “Boot Camp” series of classes for serious home cooks seeking a multi-day immersion in the fundamentals of preparing food. Offered from two to five days, prices range from $895 to more than $2,000 per person (short-term, off-campus housing is extra). Single-session classes at the CIA might include instruction in appetizers, fast gourmet meals, gluten-free baking, grilling and the basics of brewing beer. The two- to three-hour classes cost about $95 per person, with longer, five-hour sessions costing $250. CIA logo aprons and cookbooks can be among the takeaways. For the casual visitor to the CIA, hour-long demonstrations are available for as little as $20, sometimes with a glass of wine thrown in. And tours and Flavor Bar sessions are available daily.

Marketing classes to visitors

Elsewhere in the North Bay, several businesses cater to consumers seeking a cooking experience they can share with a group of friends or as a couple. Most are marketed to visitors to the region and located close to luxury hotels and inns.

Some are inns themselves. On Sonoma’s West Spain Street, Ramekins offers six rooms to customers who sign up for demonstration classes on such topics as biodynamic bees and bee culture, or for hands-on instruction in cooking wild game or making perfect pizza. Ramekins generally charges $80 to $95 per person for a three-hour class; the inn’s rooms are extra, costing approximately $225 to $325 per night (enrolling in a class isn’t required to stay at the inn). Private retreats for friends or corporate groups can also be arranged.

Not far from Calistoga’s Lincoln Avenue, culinary professional Lana Richardson operates Casa Lana, a two-room inn and cooking school. Richardson’s classes are kept small, at eight participants maximum, and can be arranged as a two-day gourmet weekend ($350 per person) that includes preparing two full meals or a three-day “culinary adventure” totaling nine hours of instruction ($650). Casa Lana’s rooms range from $189 to $319, depending on the season.

Also in Napa Valley, the new kid on the culinary block is Silverado Cooking School on Napa’s Silverado Trail. Most of its classes are hands-on and geared toward the home cook who wants to brush up on his or her skills. “Fundamentals of Cooking” is an eight-week course offered on Wednesday nights, for a total of 24 hours of instruction ($500 per person). Demonstration classes can cover such topics as canning and preserving, advanced bread baking or “Everything Bacon” ($65 to $75).

In Healdsburg, Relish Culinary Adventures’ classroom is located near the Plaza on Matheson Street. Prices can range from $79 per person for a three-hour demonstration class, and up to $299 for a two-day cheese making class. Hands-on classes are usually capped at 20 participants, and the facility can accommodate up to 36 guests for other events.

Sur la Table, the culinary market in Santa Rosa’s Montgomery Village, is one of only a few of the chain’s California stores with an attached professional teaching kitchen, and it’s well-used. Most classes are hands-on ($69 to $79 per person) and last two to three hours, but others are inexpensive demonstrations costing only $5 and running about 45 minutes. Classes are usually conducted evenings and weekends and can range from pasta making to mastering sushi to the art of baking pies. An added bonus of taking classes at Sur la Table: a 10 percent discount on store merchandise.

Repetitive, hard work

 

Jean Saylor Doppenberg is the author of three books: Food Lovers’ Guide to Napa Valley, Food Lovers’ Guide to Sonoma, and Insiders’ Guide to California’s Wine Country.