Cooking School Stories
St. Charles Avenue Magazine Food Column, May, 2004
By Michael Depp

I must confess a mixture of disappointment and impressive surprise when I first met with the graduating class at Delgado Community College's Culinary Arts program a few weeks ago. The disappointment had nothing to do with their performance or abilities, but rather how my own expectations of the experience were immediately dashed, my hopes of a dramatic arc in writing their story gone.

It had been my design to follow three of the more promising students in the program for three weeks leading up to what would be their de facto final exam, a media appreciation lunch held on the City Park campus for which they would prepare a four-course meal from scratch as well as manage the front of the house. I thought I'd be meeting a cluster of nervous but ambitious first-timers peering from around a corner at how well their lamb was going over with the crowd, an audition by fire that was the culmination of three years of study and hard work.

The depths of my naiveté are profound.

What I found instead that first afternoon was a group of already well-trained and competent professionals, all of whom had long been in the trenches of professional kitchens, many of whom were also veterans (and winners) of national cooking competitions. There was Ronald Bonnette, Jr., for instance, who was acting as that day's executive chef as each student's culminating project was writing and executing an original menu for a group of collected diners. His group seemed nearly as daunting as they come - the American Wine Society - but was presiding over a pot of veal stock glace nonchalantly as I spoke to him only a few hours before his guests were due to arrive.

Bonnette told me that he's presently working as a pastry chef at Cocoa Bean on the North shore ("I want to be as well-rounded as possible," he said), and he had already logged in years in local kitchens including Arnaud's, where he was a saucier and kitchen manager, Palace Café, where he was a sauté cook, butcher and line supervisor and Café Saulet, where he was chef.

"I came to school more to enhance my career," he said, stepping across the school's sprawling kitchen to check on the progress of a tray of prosciutto, goat cheese and cucumber appetizers being rolled by Tammy Gaines, his fellow student and garde manger for the day. "You learn a lot on the job, but there's a lot of things you miss."

Bonnette, who has already been to Tuscany on a National Restaurant Association scholarship, is aspiring to a career somewhere between the lines of Dickie Brennan, whose leadership he admired at Palace Café and Frank Brigsten ("You go into his restaurant, it's more than likely that he's cooking your food," he said. "I think it's important to stay involved.").

Meanwhile Gaines, wrapping up work on her appetizers, has been equally earning her instructors' respect. An 18-year veteran deli manager for Winn-Dixie, she reached a career juncture where she wanted to be closer to the food itself and less managerial. So she left the grocery and moved into the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where she has worked on the line and in pantry, sauté, grill and garde manger (her favorite) stations. She was immediately gratified by the transition, though she had to question her timing in taking the job on Sept. 10, 2001. "I was like, what did I just leave my job for?" she thought to herself the next day. "Those were tough times."

She returned to school, like Bonnette, to sharpen her skills and pick up the theory that usually fails to get across in the day-to-day grind of practice. Wrapping up her studies this month, she plans to stay on at the Ritz, which she loves, and the long days on her feet in garde manger, where she relishes in the meticulous preparation inherent to the job. "I think with anybody doing this kind of work you've got to love it," she said. "It's not about the money. There's a high every day just working with food."

And then there was Julie Bloodsworth, who makes the weekly trip to class from Long Beach, MS. "I started cooking when I was standing on stools with my father," she said, having since moved up to working as a sous chef in the banquet department at Casino Magic in Biloxi, where she routinely prepares meals for hundreds of diners at a time. But much as she loves the rush she gets from demands at work, one longing, like the others, sent her back to school.

"When you're doing it at work, you don't get the 'why' behind it," she said, admitting that she wasn't at all nervous about the media meal for which she was slated to work as sous chef the next week. "I do it every day at work," she shrugged, "and it's a lot easier when you're doing 45 people versus 1,000." Having just won a recipe contest sponsored by Maple Leaf Farms (Bonnette was a past winner) and returned from a Junior Hot Foods competition in Chicago with a medal around her neck, she didn't seem to be daunted by much.

So I'd like to tell you a story of how I met with three nervous amateurs whose fate rested on that four-course meal, how they pulled a dramatic come-from-behind success straight out of some melodramatic film and thralled all those doubters who never believed that they could do it with their pistachio-encrusted scallops and lamb in apricot demi-glace. But my first impression was correct, the truth of it borne out each time I met them over successive weeks. Between their excellent training at school under chef Nancy Burback and their experience at work they were already professionals when I found them. And I wish them congratulations on their graduation this month as they step fully into the arms of a job market that has already been eager to embrace them.

Quick Bites

The annual New Orleans Food & Wine Experience returns this month from May 26-30 including grand tasting events in the Morial Convention Center on May 28 - 29. Highlights this year include the return of my friend, Gourmet magazine wine consultant Michael Green, who will host "Thirsty for Knowledge: Five Wine Courses, One Sitting" on May 27 (which is followed by the beloved Royal Street Stroll); and "A Collaboration of Emeril's 'New' New Orleans Cuisine and Emeril's Award-Winning Wine List," hosted by Esquire food critic John Mariani on May 28. Details are at www.nowfe.com or at 529-WINE? The New Orleans Grill at the Windsor Court recently unveiled its second of three planned murals for the restaurant by local painter Auseklis Ozols, a curious assemblage of past and present notables that reminds me of those Komar and Malamid paintings from the late 90s. I shall try not to be upset at my own exclusion from the mural (perhaps a cameo appearance in the third?), and meanwhile, I extend congratulations to chef Jonathan Wright and pastry chef Keegan Gerhard, who ventured off to New York last month for an honored turn in the James Beard House kitchen, where New Orleans is being very well and honorably represented these days.