al you chefs...
So i just appied to attend the French Culinary Institute in NYC...was wondering if any FNN'S ever attend a cooking school? or even better FCI...trying to get all the housing and living **** straight. Hopefully they take me in and i come back out a banging cocinero...or chef.. well thanks all...should i go somewhere closer to home? is the name really worth the 40k?
My GF attended Le Cordon Bleu she is unemployed and wishes she should have studied something else. Now she has a big debt and no job.
But I'll bet she cooks up some great food for you...Originally Posted by lalo56
How about the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena????
http://www.chefs.edu/los-angeles/index.asp
40 K is a grip of cash.
I think it really depends on what you want .
If you got the Drive , Talent, Passion, and Willing to work very hard ( because you have to ) to become a Chef then it would be worth it.
Being a Chef is really tuff. So you really have to be sure thats what you want to do in life .
I just thought I would offer my 2 cents.
Good luck in what ever you do in life.
You know it!But I'll bet she cooks up some great food for you...
Chef
My friend is a sous chef from London, England. He was trained in London, one of the culinary capitals of the fine dining world. He used to work in NYC. Dave is now working under Chef Thomas Keller at Fleur De Lys. Basically NY sucks BALLS! Very EXPENSIVE to live. VERY RUDE PEOPLE! The rude people there tend to ask for more than 15% tip. They even have the balls to refuse service if more tip is not given the next time. You pay an arm and a leg every month for a closet to live in. NO JOKE you probably will need roommates on a student's budget. Right off the bat I would say you are going to need to purchase proper knives. Good quality high carbon knives can get expensive. Most just buy cheap Made in China stainless steel blades. This is how the industry basically works in the BIG LEAGUES. The more famous the chef, french for chief. The LOWER the pay. It is about the honor and respect of training under such an esteemed chef. Now the actual CHEF does almost NOTHING! The sous chef, under cooks, do more stuff than any chef. Forget about your holidays and weekends because those are prime working hours. It is very hard to keep a relationship because for one you have less prime time to spend together. Two if you are really HARDCORE then you will want to train with the best and learn the most. Hence you will get GARBAGE pay until you get famous enough or save enough to open your own restaurant. If you are getting good pay at some hole in the wall vacation resort, then you are FOR SURE not doing any serious cooking. Those tourists DO NOT know good food nor do they request it. Places like in Havasu and Pechanga will hire any fool out of culinary school. For them it is about the BUFFET. And YES your cooking school matters just like for any bachelors or masters degree. The ELITE cooking world is extremely SNOBBISH! My friends who come from Asia and open their own chinese restaurants earn WAY MORE $$$ than those fancy ELITE trained chefs. They don't even make REAL Chinese food. They open those hole in the wall combination Panda Express type places. Much more profitable than many other restaurants. The bottom line is that NY is a TOUGH place to make it. If you are one of those people who are bad *** and tend to DOMINATE your peers. Then do it. You will rise above the majority who are just trying to get by. Seriously in NY they HATE us west coasters. They don't like the fact that we do things so much slower and make so much more money than they do for less work. Yeah that is another thing everything is much faster there! Everyone has much less patience for you. It really is a HURRY UP AND BUY mentality. Sex and the City is probably very much responsible for thousands of young ladies uprooting and moving to NY only to find themselves trapped. Because of the higher cost of living it takes longer to save enough to leave. It is kind of like the Hawaii trap. Many people move there thinking it is paradise. Then they find the high cost of living and feel isolated on a small group of islands. The same thing applies to NY. Good Luck!
That school is bad ***, but NONE of my friends who have graduated from there have become chefs at ANY top restaurants.
Nyc
I forgot to mention. If you do move there. This is the place you will frequent. Most of the TOP CHEFS in NYC know to go there after hours.
http://www.blueribbonrestaurants.com/home_main.htm
I have no info on culinary schools in particular, but being a recent college grad from an expensive program I might be able to contribute. A good generalization about student loans is to never borrow more than you think you'll make in a year's salary/wages. Not sure what the job market is out there for chefs or what they make, but compare that to the $40K in tuition and see where you would stand. Good luck!!!!
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