The Few (Okay, Many), the Proud (Unless the Souffle sinks), the Indebted (Bet on It): the Culinary School Students

Cooking up dreams of running a highly-rated kitchen, restaurant or TV food show, people are applying in greater numbers to cooking schools. As two NJ students can attest, most are in for a kind of boot-camp experience with an ivy league price tag.

Nick Zamora of Bridgewater and Christopher Sachs of Piscataway are heading back to two of the top-rated culinary campuses in the nation: Johnson and Wales University, in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), in Hyde Park, New York.

Both 19, they spent the summer honing their skills in the kitchen and cooking school at Ninety Acres Restaurant and Culinary Center in Peapack-Gladstone.

PHOTOS: Chefs in training Nick Zamora (top) and Christopher Sachs.

Sachs finds his CIA program to be nearly as disciplined as boot camp, “but with good intentions in mind!”

Every three weeks his dorm room is checked for illegal substances, breakage, and general cleanliness. Every day his superiors eye him from head to toe to make sure his uniform of chef coat, hounds-tooth pants, side towel, apron and crisp white toque are immaculate and wrinkle-free.

That means a lot of washing, starching and ironing.

Even a shadow of facial fuzz will get male students thrown out of class until they find a razor. And if they miss class or otherwise don’t perform the day’s skills proficiently they are charged $50 for the privilege of attending a day-long remedial class.

Zamora is held to similarly rigorous yardsticks at Johnson & Wales. “I like the fact that the school holds its students to such standards,” says Zamora says. “I think that it teaches responsibility and how to be professional in any career, not just as a chef.”

Zamora chose J&W’s leafy campus in Providence, Rhode Island and its four-year program (which includes regular academic courses) because he loves its small-city, traditional-college feel.

Sachs chose the CIA’s two-year experience in part for its Hudson Valley location, which has “such a variety of different fresh food products and farmers’ markets all around.”

Annual tuition at Johnson & Wales is $26,000, plus room and board. Like so many of today’s college students, Zamora and Sachs both took out loans and received financial aid. (Sachs was awarded a scholarship from the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation.)

At the CIA, the price is even higher, with tuition inching towards $30,000 per year. Thanks to the financial support of his parents, Sachs decided to get the formal education rather than slowly climb the kitchen ladder. He will graduate with a modest amount of debt, he says, and hopes “to repay both the loans and my parents with my post-grad salary.”

The problem is that starting pay for culinary school graduates is not to be compared with what newly minted lawyers make, not even close (and even law school grads are struggling to find jobs).

But, says Zamora, “If you don’t have a [culinary] degree it is very hard to be taken seriously in today’s world.” Both say a culinary education should help them enter the field at a level somewhat above the lowest-paying positions.

Both Zamora and Sachs say it is important for prospective students to work in a kitchen in some capacity before they apply to a culinary program. Both of them did.

“My best advice to anyone who is considering culinary school is to get as much job experience as you can before committing yourself,” says Zamora. “School will give you most of the tools and knowledge you need to get a job, but having the experience in a kitchen and knowing how they work will allow you to keep that job.”

“I am a person who likes to be constantly pushed to new limits so that I become the best at what I do," Zamora, 19, adds. "There are a lot of students who put the Food Network on one day and think it looks fun to cook without realizing how much work it really takes to get there.”

Both young men give credit to family members for sparking their passion for food. As a child, Sachs often accompanied his mother to her job managing a corporate cafeteria. “From there the love of food just kept growing,” he says.

Zamora grew up in a Spanish-Italian household. “Our whole lives revolved around food," he says. "My Grandmother showed me everything I know about Italian cooking. She was really the one who showed me how to live to eat, rather than eat to live.”

Zamora’s goal is to own a restaurant, teach cooking classes and have his own show on the Food Network. Sachs wants to open a café and become an expert on beverages, particularly tea and wine.

Both agree that passion and hard work (not just now, but ever) are the name of the game.

SUZANNE ZIMMER LOWERY is a food writer, pastry chef and culinary instructor at a number of New Jersey cooking schools. Find out more about her at suzannelowery.com.

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