The Making of a Chef

by Michael Ruhlman

  I stayed with Coppedge to bake the last loaves of it while Dante went to lunch. The chef examined the finished loaves, which we’d shaped into ciabatta and foccacia. He noted it was a little flat and had overproofed just a little; also, he said it smelled just a tad heavy on the salt, which Dante had already told me he’d gone heavy on. But Chef Coppedge admired it nonetheless. “I like what you got here,” he said. “I may send some of this down to the Bounty as a test. If they like it …” He shrugged.

  When I told Dante Chef Coppedge would be sending our bread to the Culinary’s best restaurant, Dante whooped and gave me a high five.

  Chef Coppedge would release various teams to lunch depending on when their bread was finished. This meant a staggered departure and return, but Coppedge always arranged it so that he would have fifteen or twenty minutes alone in his bakeshop. Sometimes, he would have a bite to eat at his desk. Sometimes he would lean against his desk, arms folded, and stare at the bread baking perfectly in his hearthstone deck oven.

  A bakeshop was a different kind of place. A white patina seemed to cover everything, softening the room, making it almost dreamlike. It was gentle here. Cool. Calm. Poof, flour into a mixer. Puff, the croissants rise. Shhh, the dough is resting. And Coppedge was a baker. You could see it in his stride, in the way he thought, in the stories he told.

  He always had a loaf or two of sourdough into which he had incorporated sauerkraut and chunks of red onion. This was a regularly featured bread at the Culinary because of President Metz. About three years ago, Coppedge told me, Metz had gotten crazy for bread. One day, the president’s secretary summoned Chef Coppedge to Mr. Metz’s office on the second floor of Roth Hall. When Coppedge arrived, the secretary handed him a piece of sourdough bread from a restaurant in San Francisco. Mr. Metz wanted to know, the secretary said, if Chef Coppedge could re-create it. Coppedge said the president now eats about a half a loaf of sauerkraut-and-onion bread each day: “He likes his dough really sour.” Then, in a manner reflecting a dichotomy perhaps common among bakers that balanced extreme humility with extreme hubris, Coppedge added, “It’s a matter of educating him.”

  This sort of talk about the president could only have come from a baker. Coppedge could say this because he was a baker and Mr. Metz was a cook. Bakers and cooks were two different creatures entirely.

  Upon leaving Baking one would enter the more refined Patisserie, an even colder kitchen. Much of the work was done on chilly granite. Here students learned how to make vanilla sauce and ganache, how to temper chocolate, bloom sheets of gelatin, make linzertortes, marzipan roses, and pastry cream. They learned how to cut and roll parchment into a tight cone for fine-line decoration on their petit fours, designs they practiced nightly on cardboard cutouts. After these six weeks of Baking and Patisserie, they hung up their whites for six weeks of lecture and book work for the wines-and-menus chunk of the curriculum.

  For these students, it felt odd to be out of the kitchen for so long, but those who intended to earn their bachelor’s degree would spend two years out of the kitchen.

  I’d had a chance to sit in on several bachelor’s classes and to enjoy the polished hardwood floors and muted carpeted bachelor’s classrooms on the third floor of Roth Hall’s west wing. Bachelor’s students dressed in street clothes, though they were older and neater than your average college students. Bachelor’s candidates, who had gone through the associate degree here, paid about twenty-five thousand dollars for seventeen months of study and a six-week food-and-wine tour of California. The program, which began in August of 1994, had a capacity of 250 students and had yet to live up to the Culinary’s expectations regarding enrollment. By the end of fiscal 1996 it had admitted a total of 225 students and graduated 106 students. The numbers were increasing, though, as many incoming students now arrived intending from the outset to spend four years here.

  The emphasis in the bachelor’s program was on food service, unlike other schools geared more generally toward hospitality and management. In addition to classes such as “Accounting and Budget Management” and “Marketing and Promoting Food,” there were also foreign-language requirements, English composition, and other general liberal arts courses. It was almost disorienting to find oneself in a classroom in the Culinary Institute of America, listening to an intricate lecture on Japan’s rise as an economic power. Krishnendu Ray, the instructor of the class called Asian Culture, was a deft lecturer; he could, in the middle of a class on his native India, posit the notion that all religion was an attempt to control women’s fertility and man’s jealousy of that fertility, be convincing about it, then return the focus to Western stereotypes of Indian society. One felt far from the madness of Fish kitchen and burnt root vegetables here.

  After students in the associate’s program had passed Menus and Facilities Planning, Management of Wines and Spirits, and Restaurant Law, they once more donned whites for International Cookery, Advanced Culinary Principles, and Classical Banquet Cuisine before moving into the final nary Principles, and Classical Banquet Cuisine before moving into the final four blocks of the CIA curriculum, restaurant row. Here, students were playing for real; these were public restaurants, and if you called for a reservation at any one of them, you were likely to be told that there was nothing available for at least two weeks.

  These restaurants were the true measure of what the Culinary Institute of America could accomplish in as little as a year and a half. They were reviewed in newspapers and magazines, were well regarded, and often displayed awards and citations they’d won. The most remarkable thing about these restaurants, though, was not that they were good restaurants but that they changed staff every seven days. Every seven days, the entire staff of the restaurant would depart, and eighteen or so new waiters and eighteen or so new cooks would arrive to begin work for the first day.

  St. Andrew’s Cafe

  The bright warm day permitted the pre–Day One meeting to be held on the terrace of St. Andrew’s Cafe around glass tables shaded by white-and-green-striped sun umbrellas. Craig Edwards, a tall, natty man with an immaculate smile and a mischievous lift of his black eyebrows, was in the final stage of his front-of-the-house fellowship under table service instructor Philip Papineau. The new class, arriving piecemeal in green aprons, had finished Introduction to Table Service, waiting on their fellow students for the past seven days in Alumni Hall, the dining chapel. Craig welcomed everyone and ran through dress requirements, homework assignments, and general timing. I was the only one in whites—finishing up Patisserie—but a stranger in the group was commonplace; students regularly made up classes or dropped behind into a new group because of illness or failure.

  “You’re actually going to be waiting on humans, live people,” Craig began. This, he said, would be different from anything we had done so far at the Culinary. “Shoes,” he continued. “You can wear your skid busters, but make sure there’s no food on them. Wear your chef’s jackets to class; they’ll keep your apron clean. Please wear T-shirts; it’s starting to get hot and they absorb moisture, O.K.?” He asked that the maître d’ of the day dress conservatively; bar people were to dress for regular service. Black pants, of course—either CIA-issued polyester or black trousers of your own, but please, no cotton Dockers, which tend to fade, unless you planned to dry-clean them. A sign-in sheet would be in the foyer and served as the attendance sheet. Day One began at six-thirty, Day Two through Day Seven began at seven-forty-five. Setup till eight-thirty, lecture ended when family meal came up at ten-thirty, final inspection at eleven-twenty, and the restaurant, St. Andrew’s Cafe, opened for business at eleven-thirty. We must learn the buzzwords he’d handed out—shorthand terms for all menu items—before we arrived for Day One.

  “You’re free to smoke,” he said, “but please do it on your own time, and do it in the back entrance. We have customers going through here.” He pointed to the entrance doors. This was important information; nonsmoking students at the Culinary were the exception, or so it would seem given a
glance at the quad. “If you do smoke, please wash your hands and use a breath mint afterward. Mr. Papineau is very serious about this. If he smells it, he will instruct you to do something about it.”

  Craig, his toothpaste-advertisement smile shining brightly, had repeated this information exactly once every seven days since his graduation nearly half a year ago.

  In preparation for St. Andrew’s Cafe, I had taken my wife and daughter to the restaurant for lunch to sample the fare and get a feel for the place as an anonymous customer. St. Andrew’s Cafe, the only restaurant with a building of its own (the General Foods Nutrition Center was its proper name), formed one side of the quad where, in clement weather, hoards of uniformed students hung out before class or inhaled after-meal cigarettes. One entered into a vestibule that contained a large maître d’s desk where menus and the reservations list were kept; beside this homey item was a large glass window looking into the kitchen where students sautéed and grilled and the chef or his fellow called orders into a microphone.

  We were greeted by Philip Papineau, a tall dapper man with a smooth dark Mediterranean complexion. His manner was formal but at ease. No, he said, reiterating what he’d told me when I’d made the reservation, an eleven-month-old was not a problem at all, and he showed us to our table, the student maître d’ being engaged in a similar activity across the room.

  St. Andrew’s dining room reminded me of a large sunroom where much bridge playing might be done from the comfort of its bentwood-and-stretched-leather chairs. In warm weather, French doors opened onto the terrace, separated from the quad by a low brick wall. The facing wall, mostly window, allowed plenty of natural light to play upon the rich blue carpet and daily-polished silverware. The bar was tucked back against the observation kitchen and faced a large fireplace and oak mantle on the far side of the room.

  After the smoothness of Mr. Papineau, our waiter seemed Cro-Magnon. He welcomed us to St. Andrew’s Cafe, nodding slowly, as if trying to sell us on the restaurant we’d already chosen. He asked if we’d like anything to drink. I said we’d be having a bottle of wine with lunch and would order that in a moment. Our waiter nodded, holding a steady pen to his waiter’s pad. I had ample time to notice his lips, which curled out to expose his broad teeth. He kept nodding and staring at me, pen still perched on the pad. At about the time I considered saying, “I’ll need a moment, thanks,” he raised his eyebrows, gave me a slight smile, and continued his slow nodding. Then, in the manner of a hulky wrestler leaving the mat, he walked away and stood in the corner beside another waiter, with his hands behind his back.

  When you dine with an eleven-month-old, you must, upon sitting, reset everything except the tablecloth on the far end while the eleven-month-old throws her body across the now-barren landscape, grasping, inevitably, for the knife as passionately as she would the tree root that would keep her from plummeting off a cliff. No sooner had we accomplished this than another waiter arrived bearing a small plate of Chef Coppedge’s delicious bread. He asked if our daughter could have some (our bread would be delivered in a basket along with flavored olive oil and a white-bean spread soon). Favorably impressed, Donna said, “You must have children.” The waiter said, no, he didn’t, but another member of the class did and had suggested that we might want bread immediately. We were grateful, indeed.

  Here, I would eventually realize, was table service at CIA restaurants in microcosm. It ranged from dull and awkward to gracefully attentive. One received far more attention than one was used to, by more waiters than one typically saw in a room twice the size, and their service was unfailingly solicitous. Some of the students had waited tables before and felt at ease, but most had not and this was a new experience. All of them were paying money to wait tables and were being graded on their conduct. Even at its awkward, Cro-Magnon worst, waiters here projected the attitude that they would do anything within their power, limited though it may be, to answer every question and fulfill every request with alacrity. I have never felt more at ease in a restaurant than at any of the CIA restaurants—even the very formal Escoffier Room, and even with our prehistoric friend, who, after a clumsy and labored service, gave us the wrong bill at the end of the meal.

  It was the delivery of the bread to our daughter, however, that created and fixed the tone of the afternoon. (Of three breads served, I feel obliged to note, our daughter opted for the sauerkraut-red-onion sourdough, a very sour bread indeed; as this was a matter of education, we did not worry overly.) We had been at St. Andrew’s less than two minutes and had already had the attention of four servers; this had both overt and unconscious effects, as I would soon learn from the impressive Mr. Papineau.

  I arrived at 6:30, having fastened my bow tie and draped a green apron over my neck. I had grown accustomed to arriving in kitchens but here one arrived into a cool carpeted room with innocuous jazz music piped quietly into the background. Mr. Papineau noted that my apron was tied wrong. I’d tied it like a kitchen apron; one must tie a waiter’s apron underneath itself so that the tie does not show. Then Craig told me to put my briefcase in a locker downstairs. No book bags or briefcases of any kind were allowed here: too much valuable silverware lying about.

  I knew none of my fellow students, but what struck me from the beginning was how much older they seemed than the students I’d known in the earlier kitchens. They were not literally older, but there was a maturity to them, even to nineteen-year-old Manning Shaffer, a confidence that must be another by-product of the education and of a five-month externship in the field.

  It’s possible, too, that fast aging is caused by the work. I was continually surprised to discover that the age of this or that chef was not fifty-six but rather thirty-nine. None looked haggard—simply older, weathered, properly seasoned.

  The oldest in our group was a guy named John Marshall, age thirty-seven. He had spent most of his career in front-of-the-house work. His wife worked and before he came to the Culinary, they had a combined income of about ninety thousand dollars. They’d given that income up (John had to sell his sailboat to pay for tuition), and John now had to work full-time in addition to going to school. He lived in Pine Plains, forty-five minutes northeast of the Culinary. In the evenings he was the chef of Mashomack Shooting Preserve where, as John put it, the very rich come to shoot live, prebought birds, and drink Bloody Marys. He would not make it for Day One’s six-thirty starting time.

  Tables had been pushed aside and chairs lined in two rows in front of the fireplace where Mr. Papineau began Day One.

  “My name is Mr. Papineau. You know Craig. Chef Hanyzeski will be in the kitchen this week. Chef De Santis will be back next week when you rotate into the kitchen. Martin is the fellow and Dan is the fellow-in-training.” These were the customary formalities of every class. He took attendance. As every instructor had, he asked that anyone with learning disabilities see him. He ran down the daily routine and times.

  “Everybody needs to have: pen, dupe pad, crumber, and wine key,” he said. “I’m being incredibly dumb and repetitive about this because I don’t want anyone to misinterpret me. Everyone … must have … these four items every day.” If he reprimanded anyone, he said, “Don’t take it personally. I don’t know you well enough for you to take anything personally.”

  A word about dress would seem to be unnecessary, but Mr. Papineau brought his own table-side sentiments to the matter: “We all need to be in uniform. I think the school is right on the money with that. It says a lot about you. Customers only have to look skin deep. They don’t need to look for the real you.”

  Shortly thereafter, Mr. Papineau gave us our assignments and we were off to do our side work, all of us wearing a chef’s jacket over our apron but for Todd Sargent, who dressed in coat and tie and had wrapped his hair into a rope of a ponytail.

  I set tables with a knife and fork, bread and butter plate, butter knife and napkin. I wiped down every salt and pepper shaker in the sixty-five seat house; twenty-one matching vases filled with stems of est
amaria, a vase for each table, waited in the cooler. Others inventoried the bar, set the coffee station, filled small dishes with bean spread and olive oil, set the side stations, while five or six sat at one large round table polishing silverware. Mr. Papineau showed me how to unfold the tablecloth, touching it as little as possible, so that the crease was facing the right direction, always pointing to seat number one; soon, but not today, we would learn the unusual and clever mechanics of changing a tablecloth in the middle of service without showing the vinyl covering of the table itself.

  I asked how this group seemed to him.

  “Very even,” he said. He had sent me a confident, no-problem expression, and he had swept a broad hand across the air. “I get to see this every seven days. You’re off to a very auspicious start.”

  Only when the side work had been completed and we took our seats again for a quiz on buzzwords for every item on the menu—“orzo” for the pasta with morels, Parma ham and Parmesan, for instance; “open-face” for Mediterranean roast beef sandwich on focaccia with aïoli—did it occur to me that we were actually going to be serving people today.

  “Order-taking is the single biggest issue in the class,” Mr. Papineau Osaid. Into order-taking was condensed everything that table service was about—timing, finesse, self-control, graceful movement, clarity of mind and voice—and required some understanding of human nature, salesmanship, and hospitality. During the next seven days, we would scrutinize the “competencies”—an oft-used word at the Culinary—that went into professional table service. But, as this was Day One and guests were due in a couple hours, Mr. Papineau’s first concerns were that we understand the menu. He began with the wines, describing each simply. “The kitchen really tries to moderate fat; the food has a different mouth-feel to it, so the wine list can be tricky.” He ran through the various aperitifs offered as well as the beer.