GatewayGourmet Blog

on May 2, 2011

Restaurant Management Careers: Food Service Managers

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Restaurant Management Course If you’re interested in entering the culinary field at the managerial level, you may want to consider a degree or program in restaurant management. This educational concentration, which is growing in popularity among hotels, restaurateurs, and catering companies, allows you to combine business training with culinary skills to make a real impact behind the scenes.

Although each school is necessarily different, much of the coursework you’ll encounter is the similar. Before selecting a restaurant management program for yourself, ask to see the school’s list of courses to ensure that you are getting the education you need to succeed in the field.

General Business Courses

General business courses are applicable at restaurants, hotels, and any other type of managerial setting. These courses will allow you to branch away from the culinary field if you choose to at a later date:

Career Development
Managerial Accounting
Global Management
Organizational Development
Human Resource Management
Business Planning and Marketing
Public Relations
Procedures and Manuals
Information Management Systems
Cost Control
Sustainable Purchasing

Culinary-Based Courses

You aren’t likely to encounter a heavy focus on cooking techniques and skills, but that doesn’t mean you can skip this side of the restaurant industry altogether. You can expect to learn:

Cooking and Food Preparation
History of Cuisine
Food Display and Buffet Techniques
Menu Creation
Food and Beverage Operations

Restaurant Growth and Development Courses

Part of being a successful restaurateur is being able to build a business from the ground up. You may take courses in:

Facilities Design
Restaurant Concepts and Creation
Restaurant Real Estate
Kitchen Design and Equipment

Hospitality Industry Courses

Other basic management courses that focus specifically on restaurants and the hospitality industry include:

Safety and Sanitation
Menu Management
Legal Issues and Ethics in Hospitality
Event Management
Hospitality Industry Trends
Tourism Management
Hotel Operations Management
Wine and Spirits Management
Casino Operations

Although most programs offer training at the Bachelor or Master’s degree level, you may be able to find diploma/certificate programs or build on an existing culinary degree with continuing education courses in restaurant management. Depending on your personal goals and interests, you can spend months or years developing skills in this field.

Find a Hospitality Management School in Your City

Culinary Degree Programs

Published

How to Choose the Right Culinary School

on April 11, 2011

in Cooking Classes and Culinary Schools

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Culinary Degree Options No two culinary schools are created equally. Depending on what type of school you attend and what the program entails, you might walk away with a certificate of completion and enough skills to get an entry-level job, or you might end with a four-year degree and a desire to keep going until you get a Master’s.

This doesn’t always make one program better than another; it just makes them suited for different professional goals. If you’re considering culinary school, you’ll need to determine what your goals are and which program will best help you accomplish this.

The Different Culinary “Degrees”

Workshop: A culinary workshop is typically a one-day, one-weekend, or other short program that offers training in a single skill. From the elements of Thai cuisine to basic knife cuts, these courses are ideal for the home cook or amateur chef. The cost tends to be low and includes supplies, and you can often find the courses through big-name culinary schools. In most cases, you’ll walk away without any official “degree” unless the school offers continuing education credits for working professionals.

Certificate/Diploma: In most cases, the education you get at a private culinary school will be a certificate of completion or a diploma. In the academic setting, these have no value other than how they relate to that specific school or the culinary field as a whole. For example, Le Cordon Bleu offers a certificate program. This certificate won’t help you transfer to a four-year university, and it won’t have much meaning outside the culinary world, but it does indicate to your peers and employers what you have learned.

Associate: An Associate degree is a two-year degree that combines general education classes with your chosen specialty (in this case, culinary training or restaurant management). These degrees are offered both at community colleges and from many of the private culinary schools you’ll come across. Although you’ll spend most of your time in a kitchen or learning about the restaurant industry, you will have to meet standards in math, English, social sciences, and communication.

Bachelor’s/Master’s: A Bachelor’s degree is a four-year program, offered almost always though a public or private university. The Master’s degree is similar, though it takes six years in all (or two years above and beyond a Bachelor’s degree). In terms of strict culinary training, these degrees are rare. If you do intend to seek a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, you’ll most likely combine culinary skills with business or hospitality management. In this way, these degrees can cross fields, and if you decide to leave the restaurant industry, you may be able to apply your skills elsewhere.

Attending culinary school can be a great step toward your future. Make sure you evaluate all your professional and personal goals before you get started, since it can be difficult to change schools in the middle of the program without having to backtrack or take on additional costs.

Related Topics:

Culinary Arts Doctorate Degrees

Finding the Right Culinary School: What to Do First

Published

on April 6, 2011

How to Choose the Right Culinary School

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Finding the Right Culinary School

Once you’ve decided that you’re ready to take the plunge and go to culinary school, there is still quite a bit of work to be done—especially finding the right school.

Unless you’ve received a culinary scholarship tied to one particular school, you’ll need to consider everything from tuition costs and location to the length of the program and what your post-graduation job prospects will be. That’s why your first step in finding the right culinary school should be to research your options.

Popular National Culinary Schools

If you’re like most culinary students, you’ll start your search online. There are hundreds of culinary schools to choose from in the country, and depending on where you live, there might be dozens of options right at home. Some schools have a great reputation, some might have a not-so-great reputation, and still others might not have been around long enough to have any reputation at all. Your job is to sort through them all to find the right fit.

The two most common culinary schools at the chain level are Le Cordon Bleu, a traditional French institution, and the Art Institute, which features everything from culinary training to graphic design. These chains provide consistent, quality educational options close to home, and most employers recognize them, which might give you an edge when it comes to landing a job.

Other popular schools, like the Culinary Institute of America, don’t operate on a chain basis, but are still recognizable in the culinary community as a whole. Although the competition to get in schools like this is stiff, the work and relocation can be worth it if you work hard and make the right connections.

City and State Culinary Schools

Other popular culinary schools that will appear while you’re undergoing your search have city and state names attached to them. Many of these schools are small, private culinary institutions that operate with just one (or a handful) of schools unique to your area.

Because they are not nationally-recognized names, it’s likely that only local restaurants will recognize them on your resume. This isn’t necessarily good or bad—it just means you’ll need to ensure the program is right for you before you sign up. Look for the degrees they offer, check out the staff members, talk to past students, and even ask local employers what they think of the program.

Public Schools

One of the most popular ways to get a culinary education is to check out the programs at your local community college or public university. Almost every community college has a culinary program, baking program, and/or restaurant management program—all of which culminate in a two-year Associate degree program.

More and more universities are also jumping on board with hospitality management or even culinary programs, with both Bachelor’s and Master’s degree options. The workload and expectations are similar to what you’ll find in any other university program, though, so be prepared to work hard for your degree.

Where to Start Looking

Online databases of culinary schools are the best place to start your search for a culinary program. Because you can search by location, you can find schools in your immediate area as well as ones that might offer online learning options.

Remember, though, that researching a list of potential schools is only the first step. To make the right decision for your future career, you’ll need to investigate each one to determine which culinary school fits your vision of tomorrow.

Related Topics:

Seven Critical Mistakes You Want to Avoid When Choosing a Culinary School

More Culinary Adventures with TinFoilDuck- High End Cooking

Published

on March 30, 2011

Interview with Culinary Student Ken

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Culinary Student Ken, aka- TinFoilDuck, is back. He is very excited to tell us about his first week cooking at his school’s high end restaurant, Leis’ Family Class Act. Here is what he had to say about his first week in the back kitchen:

Culinary School Kitchen We have transitioned from the front of the house to cooking in the back of the house. At our school, we have the food court and a high end price fixed restaurant, Leis’ Family Class Act, where we serve on Wednesdays and Fridays. My group just spent 8 weeks in the front, doing service. We just switched over.

Our first week’s menu was an Asian Influenced Menu.

Amouse Bouche: Tartar of Hamachi on a Won Ton Crisp with Wasabi Foam.

Appetizer: Seafood Chawan Mushi (Japanese Savory Custard).

Soup: Curried Carrot Soup with Lemongrass Cream.

Salad: Roasted Maui Gold Pineapple and Green Tea Soba Salad with Red Thai Curry Dressing.

First Meat Entree: Miso & Sake Marinated Butterfish with Simmered Baby Bok Choy.

Second Entree: Hoisin & Honey Glazed Lamb Porterhouse Chops with Asian Risotto and Stir Fried Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes.

Desserts: Came from the Baking section so I don’t recall what we served.

Porterhouse lamb chop My task on Wednesday was to prepare the risotto and stir fry for the Lamb Chop and on Friday, I grilled the Lamb. Our stations rotate weekly so I’m not sure what I’ll be doing this coming week. It will be our Latin Influence menu. I hope I’m not stuck in the dish pit!

To read more about Ken’s experience this past week in the kitchen, including tips on how to cook this lamb chop dish, click here.

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Culinary Student Finals Week

Technology in the Kitchen

Published

on March 29, 2011

Benefits of a Culinary Internship

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technology in the kitchen One of the things we always tell prospective students to look for when choosing a culinary school is the type of technology they have in the training kitchens. That’s because culinary programs that prepare students for real-world situations use the same types of tools that are found in most restaurants and commercial kitchens today. Only by becoming familiar with the modern kitchen can you be prepared for entry-level work after you graduate.

But what exactly does that mean? Does that mean you should seek out a culinary school that has nitrogen tanks for the newest techniques in molecular gastronomy? Or should you rely on a culinary school that relies on old-school fryers that you have to time in your head?

The truth is somewhere in the middle. While it’s always a good idea to be trained on new innovations like molecular gastronomy or older technologies like a cheesecloth for straining soup, the chances of you needing that information as an entry-level line cook are very small. Knowing how to work older machinery can be great if you find yourself in a situation in which you need to resort to tried-and-true basics of the kitchen, and knowing new techniques could make you more marketable. It’s best to find a good foundation of balance between the two.

At the most basic level, the kitchen in your culinary school should include:

Fryer
Griddle
Broiler
Range Top
Oven
Steamer
Kettle
Skillet
Braising Pan
Charbroiler
Rotisserie
Food Blender
Food Cutter
Hand Mixer
Food Processor
Meat Grinder
Mixer
Slicer

While you might not be trained on advanced techniques with all of these commercial kitchen appliances, you should at least be familiar with what each one can do and how it is operated.

If you find that your prospective culinary school is missing parts of this list, you may want to take a better look at their internship and externship programs. Many schools rely heavily on this hands-on, real-world portion of the training to familiarize students with how to work in kitchen (and at the pace and setting of the real world). In many cases, it is the combination of the internship location and the student facility kitchens that create the best possible education.

Related Topics:

Molecular Gastronomy & Culinary Schools

Culinary Careers and Hollywood Fame

Published

on March 21, 2011

Does TV Glorify the Culinary Career?

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The popularity of culinary school has been on the rise in recent years, and celebrity chefs have a lot to do with it. In the past, the only way to achieve true “fame” as a chef was to become noted in your city for great cuisine and a unique restaurant, or to become a personal chef to the stars. However, beginning with Julia Child and moving up through the ranks to today’s big names like Mario Batali, Alton Brown, and Rachael Ray, many chefs are proving that you can cook good food and create the kind of name that builds a lasting culinary empire.

Becoming a “Celebrity” Chef

The celebrity chefs that most of us know and love are little bit more celebrity and a little bit less chef than their public image suggests. While many of the top chefs on television have incredible pedigrees from culinary schools like Le Cordon Bleu, the French Culinary Institute, or the Culinary Institute of America, the truth is that very little of their time is spent in the kitchen. For every dish you see prepared on TV, and for every colorful photo in the latest celebrity cookbook, there is usually a team of qualified cooks and chefs helping to contribute.

In fact, celebrity chefs tend to be favored more for their ability to be personable on camera than any prowess with a knife. Of course, this doesn’t make the job any less difficult; from branding and marketing to making personal appearances, celebrity chefs put in quite a few hours. And their background proves they’re able to handle the job. In addition to a good culinary education, many of these professionals have:

Decades of experience
Culinary training from overseas
Work history at a famous restaurant
Apprenticeships under a famous chef
Experience writing cookbooks
A culinary teaching background
Top-rated restaurants
Gourmet food lines

Unfortunately, becoming a celebrity chef is a bit like becoming the next big performance artist or Hollywood star—there are just a few dozen slots and tens of thousands of people who’d like to fill the role. And in most cases, the celebrity chefs we know and love have spent their fair share of time on the prep line, working as dishwashers, servers, and line cooks.

This is all a very complicated way of saying that there is no way to simply become a famous Hollywood chef. Unlike working your way up through a law firm to become a partner or going back to school to get a medical degree and become a doctor, chefs must find their own way to success. The most you can do is go to the best culinary school you can, work hard, and dedicate yourself to the food you create every day…and hope that your winning personality and unique vision will set you apart from the crowd.

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Can I look to Cook from TV Shows?

Culinary Arts Doctorate Degrees

Published

on March 16, 2011

Careers in Food Packaging

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culinary arts doctorate degrees As is the case with any educational field, there are options to take your culinary training all the way to the top. A Doctorate degree (PhD) in the culinary arts is fairly rare for working chefs today, but for individuals who want to move their careers beyond the kitchen to encompass food theories, cultural implications of cuisine, food safety and sanitation, mass food production, or hospitality management, post-graduate work in the culinary field can be a great step.

Why Choose a Culinary PhD?

In addition to helping you meet your personal educational goals, attaining an advanced degree is a great way to boost your culinary career. More specifically, you can:

Take on an educational role. If becoming a professor of the culinary arts is your goal, your education matters. Most professors in a collegiate setting have advanced doctorate degrees in their field.

Working at the executive level. This goes beyond becoming an executive chef to include top-tier management positions in the food and service industry.

Gaining a competitive edge. When it comes to the culinary field, there is quite a bit of competition for the upper level jobs. Having a PhD may help you be considered for more (and better) jobs.

Research potential. If you are interested in food science, particularly at the production level (for large corporations or smaller, independent manufacturers), a PhD is a great way to achieve your professional goals. In many cases, you can combine your culinary knowledge with agriculture, engineering, or food science.

Doctorate-Level Culinary Work

Depending on your professional goals and area of study, you may find yourself studying any of the following in your culinary PhD program:

Food Preparation
Food Purchasing
Safety and Sanitation
Employee Management
Menu Creation and Planning
Wine and Beverage Service
Nutrition
Food Science
Food Production
Human Resource Management
Cost Control
Quality Improvement
Gastronomy

Requirements for Entering a Culinary PhD Program

If you’re interested in pursuing this high educational goal, it is necessary to first have a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in the culinary field. Depending on your area of study, these degrees could be in the culinary arts, agricultural studies, or hospitality management.

Because advanced education in this field is still something of a rarity, you’ll also have to find a program that not only provides the degree and course of study you want, but that is also found in a location that makes it realistic for you to get your education. Many culinary degree options are offered online for this very reason, and you may be able to find a culinary PhD program that you can complete from the comfort of your own home virtually anywhere in the United States.

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Unique Culinary Jobs

Culinary School: Why are Knife Skills so Important?

Published

on March 14, 2011

Culinary Terminology Every Student Should Know

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If you take nothing else away with you other than good knife skills when you complete culinary school, you will still have a great foundation for a career in the food industry. That’s because knife skills, or the ability to properly use and maintain your knives, are one of the most important things you will learn as a culinary student. Typically the first class you’ll take in a culinary program, they are also the ones most commonly brushed up on if it’s been a few years since you worked in a professional kitchen.

What are Knife Skills?

Knife skills cover a wide range of activities related to the food preparation portion of cooking. This includes:

Holding a chef’s knife
Holding food while cutting
Avoiding injuries with a knife
Chopping common foods (such as onions)
Basic knife cuts
Uniform cutting
Knife sharpening
The best types of chef knives

Depending on the type of culinary course you take, you can spend a few days or even a few months honing all of these skills.

Why These Knife Skills Matter

When it comes to the culinary arts, many professionals rank prep work low on the totem pole. Typically reserved for entry-level cooks, cutting vegetables is what gets done before the “real” work in the kitchen begins. However, having good knife skills is a requirement if you want to succeed—either as a chef or as a restaurant. Here’s why:

Consistent cuts equal uniform cooking times. If you cut vegetables into varying sizes, they will all cook at different rates. This can quickly spell disaster. Few things are worse than a delicious dish with half of the carrots undercooked and the other half overcooked.

Prettier dishes taste better. Part of the dining experience includes the visual aspect. Well-plated dishes with a colorful range of ingredients make for a better meal, regardless of whether or not it tastes as good a bland, unappealing dish the next table over. Cutting things with flair can make all the difference.

It’s obvious you know what you’re doing. Just as you wouldn’t trust an architect who is bad at math to design your home, few people want to be fed by a chef who skips the building blocks of working in the kitchen. Developing knife skills is the first step in many as you begin your path in culinary school, and it’s important to start right.

Refining Your Palate for Culinary School

Published

on February 2, 2011

Hot Trends in Ethnic Cuisine

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Refine Your Culinary Palate Before you begin culinary arts school, it’s a good idea to spend some time acquainting yourself with food. After all, you’re about to sign on to spend the next three months to three years learning everything there is to know about cuisine: how to prep it, cook it, and turn it into a complete culinary experience. Now is the time to reacquaint yourself with ingredients you may have been avoiding for years and to really focus on flavor profiles and combinations.

As children, we almost all had foods we hated to eat. Fish, Brussels sprouts, onions, broccoli…they were the items we tucked underneath our place mats and tossed discreetly to the dog. However, as a culinary student, you are most likely going to work with these ingredients. The good news is, the foods you hated as a kid (or even just last year) probably aren’t as awful as you remember. And the more you work on your palate, the better they’re going to taste.

Smell, Taste, and Sight: The senses of smell and taste are very intertwined, and you can’t experience the full breadth of either one unless you combine them. Sight plays a role, too. Close your eyes and take the time to smell each ingredient before you eat it. Chew slowly and thoughtfully, allowing the flavors to fully develop in your mouth. You might be surprised at how rich and complex even the most simple foods can be when you give yourself time to enjoy them as a unique sensory experience.

Eat It Again: If at first you don’t like the food, try try again. In the development of any skill, repetition over time will strengthen your abilities. Culinary skills are the same. The more of an ingredient you eat, the better acquainted you will become with it. This can not only help you get over an aversion to an ingredient, but also refine your palate and improve your abilities as a culinary student and budding chef.

Avoid Palate “Killers”: Smoking, some types of medication, and an overabundance of salt, sugar, and artificial sweeteners greatly reduce your ability to taste. The best way to be able to enjoy each ingredient and dish is to live an active lifestyle that promotes eating good, wholesome foods. It only takes a few days of avoiding those potato chips and cigarettes to start getting a new experience out of your food.

With over 10,000 taste buds in your mouth and 50 to 100 taste cells on each bud, the human body is capable of distinguishing between many different flavors and enjoying combinations of foods that may have seemed unthinkable before. If you plan on working in the culinary field, spending some time working on your ability to taste will improve not only the way you view food, but the way you prepare it.

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Learning to Cook Foods You Don’t Want to Eat

Culinary School: Why a Group Setting Can Help You Succeed

Published

on January 10, 2011

Top 3 Culinary School Tips

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culinary school group setting Culinary school is a unique learning experience in that it allows a group of students from different backgrounds to gather with a single goal in mind: learning how to cook professionally. There tends to be a large disparity in ages and professional status at culinary programs. From recent high school graduates to professionals seeking a career change at mid-life, the one thing that unites everyone is a passion for food.

While there certainly can be an advantage to practicing your culinary skills at home or even having private culinary lessons, the group setting you find in most culinary schools is no accident. Food is, by nature, a shared experience; no matter what culture you visit, it’s likely that you’ll find mealtime a uniting factor for friends, families and communities. Cooking is often a shared activity, as well, especially if you look to the restaurant setting, where the delicate balance of chefs, sous chefs, line cooks and prep cooks working together is the result of quite a bit of hard work.

And while all the warmth and community that comes from food is nice, culinary school isn’t all about the warm fuzzies. The reasons culinary school is built up around a group setting include:

Learning from others’ mistakes and successes. It’s very easy for your first souffle to rise to wonderful heights while your neighbor’s falls flat (and vice versa). No two dishes you ever make will be exactly the same, and knowing what works and what doesn’t work (as well as why) will make you a better chef in the long run.

Getting answers to questions you never knew you had. In a lecture-based setting, other students might raise questions or share experiences it wouldn’t have occurred to you to discuss. More minds working toward a common goal mean more learning – and that is the ultimate goal of any good culinary training program.

Building a team mentality. No matter where you find a job post-graduation, you’re most likely going to be thrown into a group setting with a fast pace and quite a few potential dangers, and it’s a good idea to be accustomed to this before you start your first job. Being in a team also means that you’ll discover where you fit in the chain of things: a leader or a follower. Learning to work as part of a team is integral in becoming a successful chef.

Offering some healthy competition. Any of the reality television shows based on cooking will tell you that competition can do a lot in terms of pushing chefs to do their very best. A group setting will help you to gauge your skills against others, and as long as you are able to grow and learn from the experience, a little competition can go a long way.

Making connections. It’s not uncommon for the other students in your culinary program to become your best allies once you hit the working world. The friendships you make today could turn into your professional advantages later; they can help you network with important people, land jobs, or even join forces to open a restaurant some day.

The benefits of a group situation are one of the many reasons why it’s important to find a culinary school that you really “connect” with. If you don’t like the feel of the campus, or if conversations with current students and past alumni don’t inspire you, you may want to consider another school or another location. Depending on the length of your program, you could be working with other students for months or even years – and it’s a good idea to make sure you’ll get the most out of them right from the very start.

Competition for Culinary Schools