so you want to go to culinary school...

internship recap, shooting for the stars, etc.

I’m finally finding time to reflect on my summer, as one does on the cusp of September. A year ago today was my first day at Johnson & Wales, and I can’t believe I’m already on the other side of the whole program (mainly thanks to all the credits that rolled over from my first degree). What stopped me from hitting submit on my culinary school applications a year and a half ago was what I spent doing this summer: internship.

Maura & Mom came to visit in the early days when I still had to wear my JWU whites

Working is a degree requirement in most culinary programs around the world. At the start of each semester, hundreds of “green” cooks move out of the dorms (or their overpriced Boston apartment) and into employee housing at restaurants around the world. If you’re in the same camp as me—the one where we’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen before—what happens for the next fifteen weeks is a crash course in cooking on the line. You might have staged a month or so before accepting an offer, but anything you learned about the place then goes out the door. Heck—everything you learned in class might go out the door because the line cook who’s training you is barreling through everything. (By the end of it though you might become great friends, and you’ll realize there was nothing to fear.) They have you complete the simple tasks on the prep list, ones you can’t mess up (cleaning romaine, slicing radishes on a mandoline, quarting up shaved parm), while they set the station for service. You don’t understand why they’re stressed until a few weeks later when you become the person training the new girl. Day one is full of observation—you really don’t remember what you learned in Chef so-and-so’s lab because How will I ever fire all these salads? Will I ever learn how to build five cheeseboards at once? Are they ever gonna test my knife skills again to ensure I’m a good fit for this place? I really need to start keeping snacks in my pocket.

My time at Newport Vineyards was short compared to the year of training Chef puts you through if you’re hired as a full-time cook. The menu changes with the seasons, and everything that leaves the kitchen is made in house. My coworkers who have been there at least a year tell time through produce. When the asparagus deliveries dwindle, it means that June is right around the corner. By the time perfectly plump, ruby red strawberries arrive, July 4th will be here before you know. The tomato cart needs attention when the final firework show showers the island with light. It’s a fascinating way to exist in this world, one full of supermarkets and delivery services that bring strawberries to every corner of the country any time of the year.

I chose Newport Vineyards over a fine dining place in New York because I wanted to man a station by myself, even if it meant swallowing my pride and admitting everything I didn’t know. I didn’t want to pick fronds off a stem of dill in order for each hamachi crudo to look the exact same way. That’s not cooking, and I went to school to learn how to cook dammit!

Spent many Saturdays making tacos in the tank room

When I graduated from college, culinary school loomed in the background of all my plans. Plan A was to just get a job that would pay enough to allow me to still live at home and save while I found something more fulfilling to do. Plan B was taking my time with the job search in order to find a job that allowed me to work closely with food. Plan C was applying to culinary school. My first plan did not work out because I didn’t want to work somewhere that was going to set me up for a career I didn’t want (working in communications at an investment firm in the suburb where I grew up). I sucked it up and was (f)unemployed for two months post-grad (which isn’t long at all, but in the moment it felt like an eternity), and then one day I read a job description that was almost too goo to be true—an office job at a catering company in the city that would allow me to hone my project management skills while also bulking up my hospitality experience. It was the best of both worlds until culinary school kept me daydreaming at my desk. I decided applying to culinary school was something I needed to do, and if I got a good offer from a good school then I would quit my job. You know how this story ends, but let’s go back in time.

Rachael Ray, Alton Brown, and Bobby Flay were my favorite TV show characters as a kid. When my dad watched Lidia Bastianich on PBS after a day of working in the yard, I was glued to the TV with him. All I wanted for my seventh birthday was to learn how to cook, so my mom hired a pastry chef to make candies and cookies with my friends and me in our kitchen. When I was socially inept in high school, I spent the weekends baking. And when I began writing my capstone project in college, the thread that bound the project together was food. Going to culinary school was only a matter of time, and I have no regrets about it.

In high school (I wasn’t as socially inept as spending my Friday nights in the kitchen makes it sound), my classmates and I listened to the alums from our all girls school tell us about their hopes and dreams for us. They wanted us to shoot for the stars just like they did. Older women urged us girls to do the things that excited us, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that at eighteen. Only once during the entire college process did I consider going to culinary school, but it was quickly shot down by comments like “You can learn to cook by watching YouTube” or “That’s not a way to get a real job.” I was also battling a disgusting relationship with food and would not have been the best student at a place like JWU.

When the daydreaming caught up to me two winters ago, I was a bit embarrassed to admit that my first try at college didn’t turn out to be what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Applying to a traditional American university as someone who had already gone and got a degree felt silly—plus I was at least three years older than most of my classmates, and I feared that they would judge me for being older. I think back on what my life was like two years ago when I was just beginning that job at the catering company, and it wasn’t that long ago. I still feel so young, so I’m not sure what my twenty-three-year-old self meant when she said she might be too old. Newsflash, honey! You are never too old to try something new. This is all to say that time works in mysterious ways, and that you should take this as a sign to do the things you might regret not doing.

With September right around the corner, I feel the need to get my ducks in a row, but luckily I have the privilege of taking it slow. I hunt for jobs every day, but connecting with people in food who I admire is also something I’m doing. I move to a new neighborhood in under a week and am so eager to ground myself in that community when we finally arrive there. Your support as readers, friends, and family members over this past year has meant so much to me, and I hope to continue providing some sort of comfort/entertainment/nourishment to you—virtually or if I’m lucky to know you IRL!!!!!

At the end of the day, it is just food is something I repeated to myself over and over again at work this summer whenever a dish would die or I had to remake a salad because the dressing was supposed to be on the side. But it’s not just food. It’s something that ties us to our ancestors; brings us closer to one another; keeps the gears turning throughout the day (yes, even the granola bars and jerky you, too, might keep in your pocket during the workday). Cooking is a way to connect with yourself and others—even if it is over the internet. At the end of the day, it is just food. And even in the moments that test my sanity the most (see paragraphes above on working the line), I am so happy to have found it all those years ago.

From when Grandma, Uncle Peter & Aunt Connie came to see me