Out and About

Recently I've taken the initiative to venture out and see what is around the area. The other day I signed up to be a volunteer at the American Red Cross (even though I hope they don't hassle me to give blood). I also went to an information session at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts (CSCA) to get further information about culinary school. Like colleges, there seems to be a varying degree of rigor at different culinary schools. As you may expect, schools advertised on television may not be as good as other schools that don't do this (liken to DeVry University). I'm still not sure which culinary schools are top notch. I have a feeling that the Culinary Institute of Arts is one of the premiere schools (along with some of the Le Cordon Bleu schools, despite all of their television advertisements). The CSCA is a rather small school, composed of 3 kitchens (two designated for professional chef program and one for the pastry program) and a basement. Allegedly, according to the director, they are one of the top schools in the New England area, since a lot of the NE restaurants are owned by graduating chefs.

At the session they had potato soup and some pastries for refreshments. The pastries were pretty good but the soup was subpar. I felt like I could have done better with the soup without having to take a class there. They also had some student portfolios. Most of the pictures were of food that did not look that appetizing.  For instance, one was of a dish that had toast on it...but the toast was burnt. Also some of the dishes looked overcooked. All in all, I was pretty disappointed in the school, after seeing the school from the outside during my commutes. The price for this school wasn't that unreasonable (about $26K for the 37-week professional chef program), so maybe you get what you pay for?

Interesting note: There was this one guy at the info session that worked in business (whatever that means) for eight years. He was dressed pretty nicely and had an iPhone on hand. He said that he had just quit that morning and was ready to go to culinary school to learn to be a chef. That is some dedication and...some balls.