Culinary School – Is it for me?
Disclaimer : my two culinary degrees are from two different schools here in France, so my personal experiences may not be the same as yours.
I arrived in Paris the fall of 2007 to attend the prestigious Parisian culinary school L’École Supérieure de la Cuisine Française Grégoire-Ferrandi. I literally had no idea what I was getting into.
To back up a little, I had been interested in attending culinary school when I was in high school. I had sent off for some information about various American culinary arts programs and investigated different possibilities. However, at this point in my life I was completely devoted to my number one passion at the time – music. Even though I was young and very naive, I did suspect that a music degree would be enjoyable - but would not necessarily provide me with a financially attractive career. I thought to myself that if I pursue a degree in something besides music, I would probably never get back around to studying music afterwards, so why not study music first, even if my degree is only used in a non-professional capacity?
So that’s what I did; I moved to Jackson, Mississippi and studied music for three years at a private Christian college called Jackson College of Ministries. While there I continued to cook, actually quite a bit. The school was in dire financial straits and the budget for operating the school cafeteria was ridiculously small and even worse, the management of the cafeteria was an elderly couple who truly were awful cooks. As in, on Monday they would cook all the meat for the week, let’s say ground beef, and make it into spaghetti sauce. On Tuesday the leftover sauce would be called taco sauce. On Wednesday it would be called chili. On Thursday it would be made into shepherd’s pie and on Friday what was left would be put into a soup! One of my best friends (hey Crissy!) worked in the kitchen and I would often hang out there, trying to make the food better and often cooking meals for special occasions.
Two days after graduating with my degree in music, I moved to Romania to assist family members who were missionaries there. The plan was to be in Romania for only one year, but as often life would have it, plans change, and I ended up remaining there for four years. While there I attended the Universitate din Bucuresti and studied the Romanian language. This was a difficult period for the Romanian people, because even though communism had fallen some 13 years prior, corruption was so prevalent that people really didn’t have many possibilities to improve their financial and professional situations. As a foreigner, I was often targeted by people who would try to trick or take advantage of me, which, as you can imagine, was extremely tiring. I began to desire a change.
After four years in Romania I decided to return to the US with the goal of attending culinary school. I researched and visited two schools in Houston where I had family and housing available to me, the Art Institute and l’École Lenôtre. At this time (early 2007) the price for the three day a week, three year program at the Art Institute was around $42,000 and the 5 day a week, 18 month program at the L’École Lenôtre cost approximately $38,000. For giggles and grins I decided to see what western Europe had to offer. I literally googled “culinary schools in France” and “culinary schools in Italy” and came across two schools that had programs in English, one in Paris and one in Florence.
The school in Paris cost 18,000 euros; with the exchange rate plus the cost of living in Paris, the budget was about the same between the school in Houston and in Paris. So I thought for a moment….Houston or Paris….Houston or Paris? Just joking, Paris was my obvious choice, of course! I contacted the school (Ferrandi) and the lady responsible for foreign students informed me that the program beginning in the fall was almost full; in fact, she really didn’t give me much hope. She said that there were 2 places yet to be filled, but that she already had 3 applications on her desk. Looking back, it seems foolish, but even though there was a hefty non-refundable application fee, I filled out the application, wrote what is called a “lettre de motivation” (letter of motivation), and mailed it all in. To my surprise, I was accepted.
At the time, the Anglophone (English-speaking) program at Ferrandi was a one year program, including two internships, with one internship being the month of January, and another June through August. We were 16 students from the US, China, Turkey, Colombia, Brazil, and Israel, divided between two chefs, Stéphane Gabrielly and Sébastien de Massard. The program was quite intense with 9-10 hour days; also, once a week we were the chefs in the school’s restaurant, finishing at close to midnight. Our time was not just spent in the kitchen, but also in classes such as culinary chemistry, wine and cheese, French history and geography, and logically, French language classes.
