By Lynn Schwartz

Daniel Holzman of The Meatball Shop in Manhattan doesn't miss the pressure of fine dining. That's partly because he's smiling all the way to the bank.

Daniel Holzman makes meatballs. Lots of them—beef, spicy pork, chicken, vegetable and a daily special ball, which one can customize with sauce—tomato, spicy meat, mushroom gravy, Parmesan cream or pesto. Holzman, executive chef, and Michael Chernow, general manager, own The Meatball Shop, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The two born and bred New Yorkers have set out to give the customer a ballistic food adventure in their "fuss free kinda joint." A limited, meatball-focused menu offers up simple, sustainable eats with no strings attached (like an expensive bill) until 4 a.m. With an impressive upscale culinary background, Holzman had plenty of options, and the meatball business is no accident. It's a calculated choice. A choice designed to incorporate a satisfying lifestyle, good-quality food, customer value and fun.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Site visits, or field trips, are great educational experiences that provide students with an industry perspective we cannot provide in our classrooms.

Last month, we discussed Organizing Review Sessions, which help students prepare for examinations. However, the activity that broadens their education the most is probably field trips to restaurants, foodservice facilities, dining rooms, food markets and other organizations in our industry. While the logistics of these visits can be a challenge, this "Mayo's Clinic" will focus on making these trips into valuable educational experiences, a task that requires some careful planning ahead of time and the attention to appropriate follow-up assignments.

Planning for a Field Trip
One of the hardest activities for many of us is identifying the correct site for a field trip and then integrating it, effectively, into the courses that we are teaching. Often, the sequencing of the field trip becomes a challenge because the availability of the site might not match the timing of when appropriate topics are covered in the course. Sometimes, I have used a field trip to start attention to a topic and at other times, been forced to use it to review material later in the course.

By L. Adam Weiner, CFSE

Mind the chef, don’t steal and watch food costs. Students should live by these and eight other essential dos and don’ts to remain employed in that job for which you’ve trained him or her.

Last issue I addressed how to help your students get jobs. This issue will be about how to make sure they keep their jobs. Here are 11 key points to cut out and give to your students:

1. Be on Time. Depending on which survey you read, 90% to 97% of firings occur because of failing to arrive on time, not showing up at all and/or leaving early. Timeliness and attendance are so important because the schedule of the kitchen is based on everyone being there, and everyone being on time. If you come in 15 minutes late in the morning, the kitchen will be behind all day.

On Earth Day and every day, Culinary Institute of America students go green in many ways.

Aspiring chefs at all three of The Culinary Institute of America's (CIA) domestic campuses in New York, California and Texas learn more than just how to cook. The CIA is also teaching them the importance of chefs as stewards of the environment—both in and out of the kitchen. This is becoming increasingly important as sustainability is prominently featured in restaurants across the country, and the National Restaurant Association cites local sourcing and sustainability as five of the top seven restaurant trends for 2011.

Each year the Hyde Park, N.Y., campus buys $750,000 worth of produce, dairy, eggs, honey and meat from 30 Hudson Valley producers. In the Napa Valley, the CIA's Greystone campus sources much of its food locally—in many cases the food is grown by the students as part of the Greystone Green Thumbs, who manage the student-run garden.

By Mary Petersen

CAFÉ’s founder and executive director says combining the worlds of food and education has been the best ride of her life.

Being a guest speaker for “The Gold Medal Classroom” is an opportunity to reflect on, evaluate and possibly predict a particular topic of interest to foodservice instructors. I have had the privilege of this form of dialogue for many years with chefs who have become involved with education as well as educators who jumped (or were pushed) into the culinary-arts arena.

My reflection will be brief: Twenty-five years ago the majority of culinary-arts programs were certificate programs; there were no national standards as to the guidelines for a well-rounded curriculum; and the majority of our education was apprenticeship style (worthy of skills, though not as comprehensive as some liked). The American Culinary Federation stepped up to the plate and committed resources to recognize postsecondary programs that were willing to evaluate what they did against standards, host an on-site team of chefs and educators, and then make changes per the team’s suggestions so as to raise the bar for industry expectations of graduates.