Order Up, One Education!
Tomorrow is my first day of school, culinary school. It's the beginning that I've been waiting to come for nearly three years. I'm not scared, nervous or excited about the prospect of beginning school; it's simply part of the journey I've been on for some time.
This weekend I re-read the book that probably started everything for me, Michael Rulhman's The Making of a Chef. I thought it would be fitting to read about the life of a culinary student albeit at a better school hundreds of kilometres away.
The book has put me in a good frame of mind. I feel readied, my mental mis en place is checked off, I'm good to go. I want to ask questions, I want to learn, I want to experience.
Ordering, one education.
Fire, one journey.
Pick up, life.
This weekend I re-read the book that probably started everything for me, Michael Rulhman's The Making of a Chef. I thought it would be fitting to read about the life of a culinary student albeit at a better school hundreds of kilometres away.
The book has put me in a good frame of mind. I feel readied, my mental mis en place is checked off, I'm good to go. I want to ask questions, I want to learn, I want to experience.
Ordering, one education.
Fire, one journey.
Pick up, life.
1 comments:
I suggest you find a stage at one of the top restaurants in the city soon. See if you can handle the pace, the stress, etc...School is fun and all, but having gone to GBC, I can honestly say it doesn't really prepare you for the workforce.
The problem I find w/ culinary schools in Toronto is that they're just churning out numbers, increasing enrollment. There simply wasn't enough class time devoted to cooking with the numbers the school are taking in.
I've found a lot of students attending culinary school tend to want to work in food media or even starting their own catering business. Nobody wants to pay their dues as a lowly line cook anymore. I find that to be silly, learn to walk before you run.
The work will be hard, the wages will be extremely low (especially in fine dining, think $80 for a 13-14 hr shift). Schools tend to gloss over these things, after all they want you to enroll to boost their bottom line.
I wish I had the money to go to LCB in Ottawa or CIA, NECI, etc. Then again, the tuition involved w/ those schools are astronomical. It's impossible to repay those student loans on a cook's salary. I have friends that have gone and there is a significant difference in the quality of education they got vs what Humber/GBC students received.
I don't want to discourage you, it's not my intention. I just wanted to give a true reflection of what's out there. It is pretty harsh out there, especially with this recession. Pretty much all the fine dining restaurants are getting hit hard now, quite a few of them might not survive this dry spell.
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