In addition to celebrating celebrity chefs, the event highlighted students from local culinary schools who had a chance to meet their role models and leaders of the food industry. Pfeiffer stressed the importance of keeping up relationships like this in his acceptance speech, remembering his days as an inexperienced teenager before he found his calling. “I was lucky enough to have mentors and chefs pay attention to me and drill some common sense and business sense into me. I believe that in one way, shape or form, each young person needs some kind of wakeup call,” Pfeiffer said. “To these mentors, I say thank you. Without them I would not be standing here.”
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September 20, 2012, Declared Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer Day in Chicago
Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, cofounder of The French Pastry School of Kennedy-King College at City Colleges of Chicago, has been named many things in his exceptional career in pastry: Pastry Chef of the Year at the 2004 World Pastry Forum; Celebrity Pastry Chef of the Year at the 2005 Jean Banchet Awards; and a Kings of Pastry in the 2009 documentary, “Kings of Pastry,” to name a few.
In recognition of his achievements, the Chicago Culinary Museum inducted Pfeiffer into the Chefs Hall of Fame at its Seventh Annual Fundraising Dinner and Awards Presentation. Pfeiffer is the first pastry chef to be inducted into the Chefs Hall of Fame, joining ranks with Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless, Carrie Nahabedian, Priscila Satkoff, Art Smith, Jimmy Banos and his fellow 2012 inductee, Graham Elliot. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel provided the metaphorical icing on the cake by proclaiming September 20, 2012, to be Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer Day in the City of Chicago, in commemoration of one of the chefs who is turning the town into an international hub for pastry arts.