Culinary School, Redux

I played a bit of hooky this morning to be able to take a tour of the culinary school I'm hoping to attend in January. Well actually, I woke up at 6:45 to get some work done, experienced a power outage at about 7:15, worked a little more, and then played a bit of hooky. I drove out to Santa Barbara and met the coordinator for the culinary arts department at SBCC.

She took me around the various kitchens and lab rooms and walked me through what happened in each space. One room for learning techniques, one kitchen for serving the faculty members, another kitchen for the gourmet meals that culinary students get to develop themselves and serve in the Thursday and Friday night "restaurant" on campus, another kitchen for the student cafeteria, and an entire kitchen devoted to baking, where all the baked goods for the entire campus get made!

She also walked me through the uniform ("Buy two, so you can wash one while you're wearing the other - bringing in the previous day's food is a sanitation violation."), the knife set ("Make sure you carry your knives in a case - do not walk around campus with knives out, because security will come and tackle you and the psychology students will have a field day analyzing you, even though you are very obviously a culinary student."), and some special classes they have on campus, including butchering ("I prefer my food already cooked, but the students had a field day and made sausage, ragu, and I don't know what else out of one pig.")

It was very obvious that she was used to starry-eyed kids who dream of being a chef one day and wanted to help get their heads on straight. At the end of our meeting, when I asked if I needed to come back for the interview mentioned on the website, she said "Oh, no - this is the interview. We just like to talk to anyone considering this program so we can be sure they're aware that this is hard work. It's not like being Rachel Ray." She went on to tell me that about half of the students who enroll each semester end up leaving the program because they really don't seem to understand that they need to follow the rules and show up to class and labs and wear a clean uniform every day. The "interview" is really them trying to get a sense of the level of starry-eyedness they're dealing with.

I think I did a good job of seeming reasonable and showing that I understood the amount of work that a program like this means. Although, after seeing an entire kitchen devoted to baking and hearing that I would get to make, like, 400 croissants every day (to which I thought, "I've always wanted to know how to make croissants!"), I can't help but feel a little starry-eyed.