Day 2: CIA Boot Camp
9/25/2007
Today started early after a 5 hour night and no time for coffee before class. It’s clear that the whole California thing of showing up 10 minutes or so after the scheduled start time is NOT how things are done at the CIA. I was 3 minutes late and was the last one in the class – would never have happened at a west coast class! Given the coffee situation, I can’t remember too much of anything that happened before 8:15 AM, when the caffeine situation was finally rectified.
We spent the morning working as teams building lunch. Our team was assigned grilled salmon as the main protein, while the other teams had roast chicken, pork chops, roast beef, and short ribs. The dishes tasted great and looked good too! The CIA kitchen has big grills for charring meats, and I thought I had it easy since our instructor demoed the grills with a chunk of salmon. All I needed to do was copy him, right? It turns out that those grills are like the surface of the sun on a hot day! Like an idiot, I put the fish about 2/3 of the way back on the grill, ensuring I would have to reach over the volcanic heat to turn the fish while feeling my hand begin to cook. It also turns out that salmon cooks in about three minutes when its on the surface of the sun, and I had to turn it 90 degrees to get grill marks and then turn it over to cook both sides. Total chaos – scorched hands, broken fish, and lessons learned. For starters, use the LONG spatula!
After lunch, wine tasting (Woo-hoo!) and an overview of food service economics. We tasted French, Italian and US wines, all with wholesale prices under $20. Not surprisingly, I thought the Oregon Pinot Gris and the Napa Zinfandel were by far the best! Make a note of the 2005 Storybook Zin at $20 wholesale – a great wine!
I also learned that the US food service industry (restaurants, etc.) generate $500 Billion of revenue each year. And guess what? McDonalds has the largest share at 5%! One of the fastest growing segments are full service restaurants with wide menus and high volume like Applebee’s, Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse. Fine dining accounts for only 0.6% of the market! We also got some pointers on marketing. For example, ‘Scottish Organic Salmon’ is actually plain old atlantic farmed salmon! Pretty slick…
One other tidbit: Starbucks and Subway are pioneering using new cooking technology that allows them to serve hot food without installing a full kitchen or hiring cooks. They are using a new “super-oven” that combines microwave, convection and air impingement (jets of hot air) cooking methods. These ovens can heat and cooks foods in literally a fraction of the time compared to a traditional radiant heat oven.
Not only do CIA students spend several years learning the ins & outs of cooking, they also need to learn economics and marketing. For example, students are expected to understand the economic relationship between the number of customers, the complexity of the menu, the size of staff, and required menu prices in order to run a profitable restaurant. I’ve concluded that running a restaurant is way harder than it looks! Even the changing tastes of consumers are being reflected on campus, with the French and contemporary restaurants at the CIA planned to be phased out and replaced with Asian and Latin themed restaurants.
At last, the day is drawing to a close … an espresso to get perked up, some time in the souvenir shop, and a competent and uneventful dinner at St. Andrew’s Café on campus and it’s a wrap! (By the way – for dinner, I opted for a very fine mushroom soup and another round of salmon that, this time, didn’t require me to fight fire.!)
More tomorrow …
– Chris
Me and David, shortly after I “rescued” the fish:
Today’s “Genius”:
