By Peggy Ryan
Transcripts of the acceptance speech of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs’ 2009 Educator of the Year.
If you had told me in 1989 that I would be named Educator of the Year by WCR in 2009, I would have been completely flabbergasted.
In 1989 I was the chef and owner of a popular and well-regarded regional Italian restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, Va Pensiero.
By Colin Roche, CEC, CCE, CHE
Expose your students to a culinary experience that most likely know nothing about.
Game has come a long way, and today more and more chefs are increasingly featuring game dishes on their menus. The old belief that game meat is tough with strong flavors is quickly disappearing because today’s game is mostly farm-raised, making it tender and delicious. Though it usually has a stronger flavor than the meat of domesticated animals, it is also lower in fat, cholesterol and calories, while being higher in minerals and protein.
Due to its unique taste, popularity and health benefits compared to domesticated meats, game is a food product that all culinary students should be exposed to and is a great topic to add to the culinary curriculum. Some of the most widely available game animals found frequently on menus is venison, rabbit, wild boar, bison and game birds.
To help the student who’s prepping for an interview, share this compendium of need-to-knows.
One of our key responsibilities as instructors is to make sure that our students can do well in interviews. If they cannot give a good interview, they can’t get a job. I repeatedly work on teaching soft skills to my students on how to interview. I will write about that in the next issue of The Gold Medal Classroom.
Below is a culinary cheat sheet that I give to my students to study before every interview. Now, it probably isn’t useful to just copy it as is, but it might be useful to you to modify it for your students.
10 ideas to encourage your students to make sustainability part of their careers.
As educators, our mission is to prepare future culinarians, not only for the foodservice landscape as it exists today, but as we expect it will be in the future. Trends come and go, but sustainability marks a paradigm shift in the way we will do business. The debate over the validity of climate change is over, and the challenge is staring us in the face.
But with great challenge comes great opportunity. Given its size and energy consumption, the foodservice industry can be the tipping point in preserving the world for future generations. To put it in perspective, there are approximately 945,000 restaurant locations operating in the United States. According to the National Restaurant Association Conserve: Solutions for Sustainability initiative. Those restaurants use five times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings. Furthermore, with energy costs accounting for 30% of a typical building’s annual budget, it’s about financial sustainability, as well.
Service makes it special, wherever you are.
As a part of my celebrating one of those birthdays that has a 0 in it (why do they always seem so significant?), I just returned from a visit to France. It was a wonderful trip with a number of experiences that will probably find their way into future articles.
One of our first lessons in customer service came on our first night, in Nice, and at one of the most inexpensive restaurants we visited on the entire trip.
Nice is a beautiful port city on the Mediterranean, and a favorite of many famous artists, from Chagall to Matisse to Picasso. Its food is influenced by its ready supply of seafood, fresh produce and a strong Italian influence.