As revealed at this year’s IACP Conference in New York, on the map, but off the beaten path, is where today’s food trends are emerging.

Courtesy of Olson Communications

Chicago-based Olson Communications attended the annual International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Conference in April, where food, fashion and media connected in New York City. The discussions were charged with passionate and often disparate beliefs on food, fashion and the emerging role of the chef as cultural curator.

National advisory board recommends a more-modern approach to culinary education for the 16 schools in the United States.

Visiting a restaurant today often means watching chefs and their culinary staffs perform in open kitchens, tasting a variety of small plates featuring seasonal ingredients and enjoying a gourmet twist on comfort food. Gone are the days of five-course, white-tablecloth meals every weekend. So as American restaurants continue to evolve, so, too, does culinary education.

Recently, Le Cordon Bleu (LCB) College of Culinary Arts assembled its National Advisory Board (NAB) in Scottsdale, Ariz., to address the demands for today’s culinary professionals and how their educational programs can evolve. The board, comprised of a variety of chefs and industry business leaders, agreed that today’s educators need to focus on the fundamentals of cooking, while also having the flexibility to integrate a more modern approach.

Many students arrive for class thinking they don’t need to know about beverage because they deal with food. Here’s why they’re wrong.

By Albert W. A. Schmid, MA, CCP, CHE, CFBE, MCFE, CCE, CEC, COI

The message outlined in black letters on the white t-shirt is clear: Beer is Food! The first time I saw this t-shirt, I smiled, but beer does not hold a unique distinction among alcoholic beverages because wine and spirits are food, too.

In simple terms, beer is made from grain and wine is made from fruit. If a beer is distilled, it becomes either vodka or whiskey. If a wine is distilled it becomes a brandy (or sometimes vodka). There are other spirits that might be considered either depending on how you look at them, such as tequila from the agave plant, rum from sugar cane and vodka from potatoes. In any case, the alcohol starts with a food product, and we consume the final product as part of a meal or snack.

At The Culinary Institute of America, a final-semester project to plan and execute an event marketed to the public is one of the most rewarding parts of students’ educations.

By Dr. Pat Bottiglieri

Foodservice Management is taught in the final semester of the senior year in the Bachelor of Professional Studies Program at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Prior to taking this course, students will have successfully completed most of the required management and liberal-arts courses and all of their culinary, baking and pastry courses. Foodservice Management provides students with managerial concepts and theories for a senior level of management practice.

In addition, the course includes a capstone project. The project requires students to plan and execute an event that is marketed to the general public. The events must generate a profit. And, as the CIA is a not-for-profit college, any surplus is “reinvested”—divided between an external charity that students select and an internal scholarship fund. This part of the course is worth 25% of each student’s grade.

Dylan Lipe of Sweet Baby Ray’s Restaurants & Catering was born to barbecue.

By Brent T. Frei

Barbecue is “part of everyday life” for Dylan R. Lipe, corporate executive chef for Sweet Baby Ray’s Restaurants based in Wood Dale, Ill., with two units in greater Chicago, and True Cuisine & Sweet Baby Ray’s Catering, a full-service off-premise catering, event-planning and event-production company.

Hailing from southern Illinois, part of America’s rich barbecue region that includes Kansas City, Memphis and St. Louis, “As I’ve grown as a chef and culinarian, it doesn’t matter where I went, I would always seek out barbecue in some form or another,” Lipe says.

Sweet Baby Ray’s is eponymous with the No. 1 barbecue sauce in the nation. But the restaurants’ reputation transcends the sauce brand that was sold five years ago to a salad-dressing manufacturer. Licensed to open four restaurants under the Sweet Baby Ray’s name, the company still has room for and envisions expansion.

Because the culinary and foodservice industries are very small, helping students learn how to establish personal relationships with their peers becomes part of our jobs.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, this column explained the importance of and ways to construct an elevator speech, one of the critical ways to explain oneself to others. This month, the topic is how to help students make connections to others. Some of them may be able to do so easily and find their extroverted personality a real asset. Others are not so comfortable reaching out to others and may be reluctant—for various reasons—to talk about themselves.

Students want to be assessed. It appeals to their emotions and egos. Find ways to assess them beyond merely awarding a letter grade.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

There is a Jimmy Buffet song called “Fruitcakes” that contains the line, “We all got ‘em, we all want ‘em. Now what do we do with them?” We might not want assessments, but we all got them, and the question becomes: “What do we do with them?” I submit that creative assessments can be used to inspire your students to levels they (and you) thought they could never reach.

Whether you teach in a rich suburb, an inner-city school, a nonprofit vocational center or the top culinary academies in the world, you will always have less-than-ideal students in your class. Because of physical, emotional or mental problems, because of upbringing, because of poverty or substance abuse, or because of a myriad other factors, you will have students who need extra motivation, who need extra inspiration. The purpose of this article is to show how assessments can be used to accomplish these two goals.

McDonald’s celebrates innovations in energy savings, recycling and other environment-focused areas around the world.

Reusing air-conditioning condensation to water plants and clean. Repurposing advertising banners into fashionable tote bags. Recycling used cooking oil to power generators at a hospital. Today, Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's Corp. celebrates these and dozens more examples of passion and innovation in the 2012 Global Best of Green report.

McDonald’s is the world’s leading global foodservice retailer with more than 33,500 locations serving approximately 68 million customers in 119 countries each day. Best of Green is a collection of best practices that focus on the environment and provide tangible positive impact for the company’s business and brand. The report illustrates progress in eight categories: energy, packaging, anti-littering, recycling, logistics, communications, green building and greening the workplace.

An e-learning module focusing on one of the most important and cutting-edge culinary regions on the globe.

Chef David Kramer, associate professor of culinary arts at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill., is one of six chefs and foodservice professionals nationwide to win a 2012 United Fresh Produce Excellence in Foodservice Award. Nominated by Chicago-based Testa Produce, Inc., Kramer won in the Business in Industry & Colleges category. The awards program, created by the United Fresh Produce Association and sponsored by PRO*ACT, honors chefs and their companies for innovative and influential use of produce in the culinary arts.

The winners were selected from nearly 120 nominations submitted by produce companies and foodservice operations across North America. A panel of produce and foodservice-industry leaders reviewed each nominee’s demonstrated incorporation of fresh produce into menu development, use of protocols for correct storage and handling of produce, leadership in produce-related community service, and special events and recognition by their company and industry peers.