Le Cordon Bleu graduates 13,000 students a year. As this author reveals, the biggest change among U.S. schools involves teaching interpersonal skills so that successful grads know what’s going on all over the business.

By Tristan Navera

Whether they be aspiring young cooks or experienced and refined restaurateurs, people involved in the profession today are finding that working in a restaurant has drastically different demands than it did five or ten years ago. To the faculty at Le Cordon Bleu, the largest international hospitality institution in the world, these changes mean formal culinary education is more helpful than ever.

Back to Basics
Culinary education has always been essential for its teaching of ground-level cooking skills, says Chef Edward Leonard, Certified Master Chef, Le Cordon Bleu vice president of culinary education and corporate chef for Le Cordon Bleu North America.

Almost 25% of the motor cortex of the human brain is dedicated to the hands. Yet as chefs, says this former president of a prestigious culinary school, we take better care of our knives.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

I have been giving lots of thoughts to my tool kit lately. Like many chefs, I have a plethora of knives, forks, cutters, pastry tips, strange new gizmos and the like. My tool kit (if I brought everything with me to the kitchen) would require a two-wheel cart to drag it from location to location. Instead, I usually bring a handful of knives in a small tackle box.

Unlike some of the young “chefs in training” who have $300 Japanese knives, mine are pretty modest. Keeping an edge on the knife is the only real important factor in determining how well a knife cuts.

As I look at this arsenal of cutting equipment it suddenly came to me that the knife without the hand is pretty useless. This made me really start to wonder in amazement at the versatility of the human hand and how it truly is the most important tool in a chef’s kit.

Physical structure and location are no longer as important as the ability to promote a good food product through both traditional and innovative means. Beyond pop-up restaurants, touch-screen ordering and food trucks, what’s next on the horizon?

By Douglas D. Stuchel, MAT, CHE

The restaurant business has traditionally relied on word-of-mouth advertising as a method of marketing and driving repeat business. Usually, this exchange has resulted directly from conversations between friends/acquaintances who have recently dined at a particular facility.

We are, however, rapidly becoming a society that uses such mobile applications as Urbanspoon, Foodspotting and OpenTable to guide us to restaurants based on the opinions and recommendations of people we do not know and, most likely, will never meet.

It used to be said that if you had a bad meal at a restaurant you would tell approximately 10 friends about the experience. Today, a bad online review can reach hundreds of potential customers in real time, influencing their dining decision and immediately impacting a restaurant’s bottom line.

After years of working hard and plenty of time spent “doing life,” retirees have earned their break. Chefs at Beacon Hill at Eastgate in Grand Rapids, Mich., uniquely meld their talents with the culinary wonders of the region and the desires of residents.

By Timothy England, CEC, AAC

It been said time and again that life begins at retirement. For many this means a time for travel, investing in family, perhaps even taking up a new hobby, or reengaging in an old one. It may mean new experiences with your bride or a time to dance with your groom again. Perhaps it is a friendship that needs nurturing or a time for your soul to rejuvenate with regular exercise.

Retirement has long since passed the time of boring days at home with little or nothing to do; menial tasks that fill the time but do little to engage the mind. With all the possibilities for adventure and new discoveries, retirees these days are known to be setting out on a new life that takes them far beyond the routine of their long, hard working years and into a world of fresh starts and checking things off that lifelong “bucket list.”

An English professor expresses his hope for the culinary-arts students he teaches: that they will see how public speaking translates to everyday interactions.

By Scott Palmieri, Ph.D.

With dreams of becoming the next Thomas Keller or Alice Waters, freshmen who must enter my Communication Skills class at Johnson & Wales University are often far from enthused. As my colleague, Bill Lenox, reminds me, when they go home for Thanksgiving and are asked by their loved ones to wow the family in the kitchen, they are left to explain that they were behind a desk or podium for most of the fall.

For the university, this is a source of pride, as they receive a well-rounded education. However, how do I, an English professor, relate my subject to future culinarians? After 11 years teaching English courses to culinary and baking-and-pastry students, I have learned to speak their language better while bringing them into my world.