Let's get something straight about culinary school

Two months from today, I shall be a student once more, this time wearing a chef's jacket and wielding a large knife.

That's right. I took the leap and enrolled in culinary school. I shall be attending Le Cordon Bleu affiliate here in Sacramento for their 12-month Extended Certificate program.

As I await the start date of my new adventure, I want to make a few things clear to the general public - to those thinking about attending culinary school, to those with opinions on culinary schools, and to those with delusions influenced by the food entertainment we see on TV.

1. I have no plans to abandon comics or music. Let's just leave it at that. But I need a job, preferably one that I like. I've already done my time with the job I hate so I can come home and work on the things I love, and it didn't work out so well. I've been thinking of going to culinary school for at least five years, give or take. I always dismissed it as a fleeting dream, something I would save for the age of 35 or so if I wasn't successful in the other areas of my choice. Currently, I'm not unsuccessful. I teach drums and write music for a living. It just doesn't pay very well, and that's gotta change. Like I said, I'm not leaving music behind, but in my search for a dayjob that I like, I revisited the notion of going to culinary school. People, in any economy, continue to go out to eat, yes? I love food and cooking, yes? It seems like a logical choice. While I have no idea what the future will bring, I hope that my acquired skills will help find me a job, which in turn will afford me a comfortable living once again. I understand that working in the food industry will probably mean a commitment of many, many hours and that other things in my life may have to sit in the proverbial back seat, but I'm willing to take that chance for a career that looks like it will satisfy me, both personally and financially.

2. I do not know what will happen beyond graduation besides me seeking employment. I want to try working in a professional kitchen. It looks like fun. It looks like hard work. It looks satisfying, creatively. I could be dead wrong. I won't know until I reach that point. What I do know is that I have no delusions about the glamourous career television makes the professional kitchen out to be. I have no plans to become the next celebrity chef, or the next owner of a national chain of restaurants. I have no plans to become the next guy who will travel the globe eating all sorts of stuff we're no accustomed to in America. Would those things be nice? Sure. I'm prone to daydreaming. But I'm not going into this with those goals in mind. My goal is to learn technique, methodology, efficiency, and ingredient interaction, all of which will help me be better cook. From there, my goal will be to seek employment with my new skills. Where that takes me remains to be seen. I won't know until I have some experience in the field.

3. I will be attending Le Cordon Bleu affiliate in Sacramento. After much research - though, admittedly, there's always more research I could have done - I decided this would be the logical choice. My criteria:

• Money: I don't have a lot of it and I can't take out too much in student loans.
• Time: I can't spend two years in school, as much as I'd like to. There are other things in my life that need attention.
• Location: we can't relocate. We can't afford it. That ties in with the money issue, except in this case relocation would impact my wife. As much as I'd love to check out the Culinary Institute of America or Johnson and Wales, it's not feasible.
• Externship: I want to do one. I want part of my graduation requirements to include working in a real, fine dining restaurant.

There isn't a whole lot of choice here in Sacramento. We've got Le Cordon Bleu, which is an affiliate of the Paris school, but not run by the same faculty. We've also got the Art Institute and the American River College culinary programs. ARC, though I've heard they have a fine program and would be considerably cheaper than LCB or AI, was off the list because an externship isn't part of the program. Instead, students work in the school-owned cafe. This is fine, but it isn't what I want. The program offers a certificate and an Associate's Degree (two years) program, and each program requires students to take classes in hospitality management (food costs, restaurant management, etc). I have heard that people really like the program, but the cooking half of the curriculum didn't seem like what I wanted and the lack of an externship was the deciding factor.

The Art Institute's program also looks very good. Half of it is hospitality management and the other half - the cooking half - looks very appealing as well as diverse. They offer a certificate and an Associate's Degree, and program does include an externship. If I attended this school, I would want to enroll in the two-year program, but that wouldn't be feasible. The one year program would be a good choice, too, but in the end the decision was based on cost... and they want a ton of money.

The Art Institute's total tuition for the diploma (about one year; 5 quarters) is $32,093, and their two-year program is $58,691. I'm not sure what is included (ie. are the application, enrollment, lab, and student activity, and other fees included or separate from tuition?), but if this is the base price to go on, wait until you read about Le Cordon Bleu's tuition.

Le Cordon Bleu has an application fee of $50, which you pay at the time of enrollment. Then, tuition is $18,971 for the 9-month program or $22,380 for the 12-month program. So the Art Institute wants $10,000 more than LCB, and there are other fees that need to be paid on top of that? Yeesh.

Le Cordon Bleu only offers certificates and there are no hospitality management classes, but that means there is a large emphasis on cooking. While it's always good to know the business side of things, I figure I can learn that as I gain field experience or I can take individual classes at American River College. According to the admissions representative, the basic classes (Foundation I, II, and III, Food Safety and Sanitation, and Baking and Pastry) are comparable to the basics curriculum at the Paris school. The extended program, in which I've enrolled, offers three more classes and the earned certificate is issued from the Paris school (the regular certificate is not).

For my money (loaned money) and time, Le Cordon Bleu is the logical choice.

4. An admissions representative from the Art Institute talked with me the other day and she did not seem to hold Le Cordon Bleu's program in high esteem. This was probably part of her job, but since I have no evidence to the contrary, I can only take her words at face value. I did some poking around on the Internet to see if anyone had any opinions about both programs. I mostly found people commenting on Le Cordon Bleu, the CIA, and a few notes here and there about Johnson and Wales.

Without getting into detail, let me say this: I've never known an organization where 100% of it's members were great. I'm sure a lot of incompetent people go to Harvard and a lot of smart people go to California State University, Sacramento. Just because a student attends the CIA, doesn't mean he or she has the makings of a three or four star chef. Just because a student attends a community college program doesn't mean he or she has inferior cooking skills. I'm willing to bet that, no matter where a student goes to school, most of the student body don't work hard, aren't interested in learning, and basically waste the money required to attend their school. It's the relatively small percentage that do work hard and do want to learn that actually have any desirable skills and knowledge after graduation.

I have read statements and blogs from students that have attended other Le Cordon Bleu campuses that have enjoyed their time at the school and learned a lot.

The truth is, I don't know what the school will be like. Any school will teach you something, but you also get out what you put into it. I think there will be a lot to learn by attending the Sacramento campus. I think the curriculum promises a large culinary education. Will they deliver on that promise? As with any school, I'll find out when I start classes.

I can also tell you this: I'm not interested in the actual, paper certificate itself. I'm not interested in any sort of prestige a school may or may not have associated with its name. I am interested in learning and acquiring good cooking skills. Sure, a certificate and a school's name may look good (or bad, depending) on a resume, and that's how the world works, but when it comes right down to it I want a potential employer to assess me for my skills, my knowledge, and my personality, not the name of some school I went to.

* * *

I'm excited for school to begin. I will learn what they have to teach me and I will work hard at being a good cook. We'll see where my adventure in professional cooking takes me from there.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries - Sacramento

Like many, I'm always on the lookout for a good burger.

Where I live, here in Sacramento, we've got a number of places that offer good burgers. What is close to my actual home, however, is limited. Here, we have an In-N-Out. Other than that, if we want a burger that's nearby, we've got Carl's Jr., McDonald's, and Jack-In-the-Box. If we don't want a fast food burger, we've got a BJ's and a Chili's. Otherwise, we have to venture much farther away from home.

So really, near our home, we have an In-N-Out.

Now, we have a second choice, and it's the east coast staple, Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

I was excited to try it. According to my wife, this place was supposed to be all the rave on the east coast. Later, while reading reviews online, I found out that this is the burger place that President Obama likes. Not that that had anything to do with my want to try the place, but that's an indicator of how famous this place is on the other side of the country.

Before I continue, I should probably divulge to you my criteria for rating burgers. Firstly, it's gotta be good. That's a given. What's a good burger? Well, the meat must be tender and it must taste like meat. Normally, I don't want it to taste like anything other than meat, though there are sometimes exceptions: I've made chipotle burgers; my dad likes to put onion soup mix in his. So yes, I make exceptions for burger patties with some variety, but more often than not, I want a well-seasoned (not to be confused with over-seasoned) hamburger patty that tastes like beef.

Then, there's the bread. Is the bread stale? Is it cheap? Does it goes well with the patty and the fixings? Is it generic, cheap-tasting bread that is absolutely the opposite of the great things I'm tasting inside?

Construction: my rule of sandwich construction is that if you put it in a sandwich, you should be able eat it with the sandwich. In other words, I don't want all my fixings to fall out.

Then, last but not least, there's value. What am I paying for the burger, and is it worth it? For instance, is the $9.00 I'm paying for a restaurant burger worth the dry, tasteless burger I received?

Now, then. On to Five Guys.

It's a very good-tasting burger. Their regular burgers are double-patty burgers. Want a single patty? You'll have to order the little burger. I got a cheeseburger with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickle. The wife and I shared an order of small fries; originally, we ordered a large, but we were told it would feed three-to-four people, and the small would be good enough for two. So, two it was. And there were, indeed, a lot of fries.

Burgers and dogs come foil-wrapped. When I opened my burger, it was hot and ready to go, until I realized that there were no onions. This, coupled with the fact that our friend, who'd accompanied us, didn't get cheese on his bacon cheese dog, was not a good first impression. At the counter, I got the onions for my burger but they were roughly diced, not sliced as they did not offer sliced onions. This led to a violation of my sandwich rule: as I ate, onions fell from my burger repeatedly. Annoying, since I wanted to eat them with my burger, not pick them up and reinsert them; not pick them up and eat them separately.

Enough about the onions. How was the burger? Very good. To be honest, it reminded me of a very good homemade burger you'd get at a family gathering. Except this one came wrapped in foil, like at a fair.

Which leads me to my wife and our respective opinions of the bun. She didn't like it, thinking that it was too soft for the burger, thus making it too thin as she held it. I didn't mind the bun. I had read that many people thought it was too soft or to doughy, but I didn't mind it as its softness complemented the texture of everything else; with the melted cheese, it was quite a gooey burger. The resulting thinness of the bun also put more of an emphasis on the patties and the fixings.

Tip: If you want to retain the fullness and firmness of your bun, don't wrap your hot burger in foil. All it does is the steam the bun. If that's what you want, then great. But, some people will complain about the result.

As for the meat, Five Guys like juicy and well done. To me this is a contradiction because well done basically means to overcook the meat until it's drier than Stephen Wright's humor. I can tell you that the burger seemed juicy, but it certainly wasn't overflowing with juices. The melted cheese and slathered mayo certainly helped, but it wasn't the juiciest thing I'd ever eaten. I wonder if there was high fat content in the meat to help retain some juices while cooking it to well done. Speaking of well done, as you might expect, the meat had a firm, mealy texture due to it's dryness. But, the patties did taste like meat. Not really well-seasoned meat, but then, perhaps it didn't need it what with all the other stuff on the burger. However, without all the fixings, including cheese, I wonder just how dry and season-less it would be.

The fries? What I want in a French fry is a fresh, clean, crispy outside and a hot, mealy inside. I personally don't like fries that are too thick because potatoes, by themselves, are pretty bland. The remedy for this, of course, is a dipping sauce. However, this being a burger-stand style place, the only dipping sauce for the fries was ketchup. No thanks. The fries weren't bad. Considering the fries on their own terms, they were thicker than shoe-strings but thinner than steak fries, well-seasoned and tasted alright, but they weren't consistently crispy - in fact, most were soft - and in the end weren't anything special.

My cheeseburger was $5.69, and the small fries were $2.39. I personally thought the burger was worth $5.00, and while this was only a $0.69 difference, to me that $0.69 brings me closer to paying $6.00; it was like the burger was trying to stretch its value. It was certainly good, and I would return to eat here again, but coming that close to $6.00 is pushing it. As for the fries, it seemed as if we were paying for quantity, not quality. While the fries were not bad, they weren't anything special. The volume alone makes the price worth it, I just wish the fries stayed crispy and had a bit of a cleaner taste.

So, the results?

	The east coast is dominating the west coast burger scene. Deal with it.
	Let's see... this place or a good ol' Sacramento staple... what to choose, what to choose...
	Gooooooooooooooooood. Very good.
	Meh. did I just walk into a McDonald's?
	Hey, look, they're selling burgers they found in the trash! Yum!

I give Five Guys Burgers and Fries 3.5 stars. The burger was very good, but, though I've only eaten here once, it didn't impress me enough to make it one of my first choices in Sacramento. It's certainly a choice, however. In fact, it's a serious consideration, especially so close to home. I personally would skip the fries next time, however, and save the money. Perhaps my subsequent visits will have the burger win me over more. Time will tell. But yes, I will return.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

4630 Natomas Blvd.

Sacramento, CA 95835

(916) 419-4109

www.fiveguys.com