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What's Cookin' in 14 Culinary Classes in Missouri
It’s an overcast Sunday afternoon, and the bright interior of Kitchen Conservatory in Clayton welcomes a steady trickle of customers. A dozen of us gradually find chairs at a homey table next to a huge, granite-topped island. We’ve barely begun to sip our coffee and ice water before we’re hustled up to don aprons, wash our hands, and get busy with brunch.
Missouri has 14 schools that teach everyday cooking classes (see the February/March 2010 issue for the full story), but there are also several places that train gourmet chefs around the state.
Where Chefs Earn Their Toques
Thanks to career changes necessitated by the economy and to celebrity chefs on the Food Network, professional culinary education programs in Missouri are thriving. “Most of the culinary courses are just about at capacity,” says Professor Robert Hertel, who leads the Hospitality Studies program at St. Louis Community College in Forest Park. His program is widely seen as a model for others in the state, with its national reputation and an American Culinary Federation seven-year re-accreditation, the highest level the organization confers.
The culinary world is a tangle of titles and acronyms, and graduating students’ associate of applied science degree is important. But ACF accreditation for schools and certification for chefs is a sign of quality. Despite the economic downturn, Robert says “It seems there are always more jobs than qualified applicants,” and students are often tempted out of the program before completing their degrees.
Recognizing the demand, the state’s newest school, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts St. Louis in St. Peters, opened less than a year ago and within three months had enrolled 165 students. It currently offers certificates in professional culinary arts, patisserie, and baking.
Because culinary instructors spend long hours in close quarters with a low faculty-to-student ratio, they invariably speak of the bonds they form and the corresponding license to be brutally realistic with aspiring chefs. “Our business is hot and sweaty work,” says Chef Ted Hirschi, the program coordinator who built the culinary arts program at East Central College in Union from scratch. “Sometimes it takes a little modification of their expectations.”
Listening to Chef John Womack, the culinary program director at L’Ecole Culinaire, a St. Louis-area affiliate of Vatterott College, describe the classes the school’s students go through, one starts to appreciate how little culinary school resembles the Food Network. In addition to intensive hands-on technique work (everything from perfecting pastries and Chinese sauces to breaking down a whole pig and carving ice), students are immersed in food safety, cost control, nutrition, and other topics that are part of ACF-certification testing. Then, near the end of the program, they get a chance to run their own mini-restaurants.
John calls the food at the school’s restaurant “discount gourmet.” Likewise, East Central College runs a restaurant in early March, and Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield operates a restaurant, Scallions, once a week for lunch. Lisa Gardner, who chairs OTC’s Culinary and Hospitality Department, calls Scallions “one of the program’s hallmarks” for giving students a grasp of the real world.
This kind of dedication to quality was instilled early in Missouri, starting with St. Louis Community College’s program forty-five years ago under Jack Miller, a legendary professor whose textbooks on hospitality and restaurant management still guide students today. “We’re not just training people to be cooks,” says John. “We’re giving them tools, so they can be chefs.”
