Working as a chef gives you more freedom and allows you to be more creative than any other profession. Cooking also encourages you to make adjustments and create new and interesting flavors. Even recipes are just guidelines, and you can change the proportions and add new ingredients to make your own dish. Cooking is an incredible way to express yourself and share your passion with others.
As a chef, you'll have the opportunity to create new dishes, experiment with unique ingredients and, perhaps, one day, create your own restaurant concept. The culinary arts are an incredible field for people who want to show their creativity through food. In addition to the numerous advantages of being a chef, this profession also has some disadvantages. If you love food and cooking, why not make a career and become a professional chef?.
In addition to job satisfaction, being a chef offers a great career progression, from kitchen assistant to demi chef, then chef de Partie, subchef, kitchen chef and, finally, executive chef. You also have the option of taking your career to various locations, including restaurants, hotels, resorts, catering companies, and corporate events. Gowri Chandra is a journalist with nearly a decade of experience, whose work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, VICE, Forbes and more. She was named a National Press Foundation Food Agriculture Fellow &.
Everyone was asked the same questions. First, aside from money, does culinary school open doors that would otherwise be closed? In other words, if a talented and hardworking person spent X years in cooking school instead of working the same amount of time in a restaurant, could they achieve more advanced positions throughout their career thanks to it? When it came to financial ROI, three out of four people said that cooking school was worth it and two of them graduated completely debt-free, thanks to scholarships and personal savings. Only one person felt that it wasn't. At the end of the day, if this decision is in front of you, follow your heart.
Friedman has worked in pastry in LA,. She currently teaches baking classes and runs Kitch'N Giggles, a meal kit delivery service aimed at families with young children. At 24, Friedman already had a degree in applied mathematics and had been working in a lucrative technology position for two years before deciding he needed a shift. He ended up enrolling in a nine-month part-time pastry program at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.
After accumulating loans from his undergraduate degree, Friedman also insisted on no longer going to cooking school. He saved money from his work in technology to pay for the program and believes it was worth it. Was it financially worth it? No, but that was already known, he says. I knew how much I expected to win when I entered.
Considering all that, I still think it was the right decision for me. I love working in restaurants. She had worked at a bakery in Boston before her husband got a job in Los Angeles. She had no contacts in the city and wasn't very excited about the first job she got.
I was like, wow, I don't want to work here. But do it, she says. And, eventually, he moved on to more satisfying and prestigious roles. Without a doubt, Friedman doesn't think he could have gotten where he is without a culinary school.
I've met some people who may have made their way, but in general, I don't know a lot of people who have followed that path. It's about who you know, and if you haven't been to school, you don't know anyone in the industry who gets that preparatory cook job. Even if you've been to cooking school, it's very difficult to get a job. You have to come out into the light.
You can start by washing dishes, but most of the guys who do the dishes are willing to do the work for the money, and that's all. I've met people who have gone from the dishwasher to the prepared cook, but it takes a long time. He recommends that anyone considering studying cooking go and work in a restaurant or bakery for a month. “Either you love it and you become addicted to it, or you hate it,” he says.
Now I've been in the field for five years and I love it. There's something about it that can't be found in other industries. Anthony Marsh has left the culinary industry, but he once worked in Gordon Ramsay's kitchens and other major restaurants across the country. He attended Le Cordon Bleu for a few brief moments before deciding that it wasn't for him.
“I dropped out of school almost immediately because they taught me things that I had learned in the first two weeks of working in a two-star restaurant,” he says. For Marsh, it was better to spend her time learning in competitive kitchens and getting paid to do so. “I literally walked into one of the best four-star restaurants in South Carolina and got a job,” he says. Massin graduated in 2004 from Johnson & Wales with a degree in food service management and an associate degree in culinary arts.
He had worked in restaurants before that, so he knew he wanted to be a chef in the first place, but earning a degree was of inherent importance. My personal values were to have a university degree. “I didn't want to spend my life saying that I never did it,” he says. He also recognizes that culinary school isn't the only way to be successful.
It used to be that if you didn't go to the CIA, you were nothing. But he no longer believes that to be the case. For Massin, the investment in his title paid off later in his career. “When they offered me the opportunity to have a stake in the ownership of a restaurant, that's when the things I learned in cooking school took on a lot of value,” he says.
He cites skills in menu planning, facility design, cost control, legal education and general management as vital to his success. Johnson's career path may be the most unique and, at the risk of not being broadly representative, it's definitely interesting (and inspiring). While Johnson was working in a Seattle restaurant as part of his career, he began making cooking videos and uploading them to YouTube. After doing that for two and a half years, he found an online producer position at BuzzFeed.
In practical terms, a degree also offers more condensed and structured training than what can be achieved organically working in restaurants. For example, you'll study Asian cuisine for three weeks, Mediterranean cuisine for three weeks, he says. When you finish your associate or bachelor's degree studies at the CIA, you'll have a wealth of experience in all different types of food, instead of working for three to five years in a restaurant with just one type of cuisine. Johnson got a big financial deal at the CIA thanks to his hard work applying for scholarships, but he still believes that school has value.
The CIA may cost more than other universities, but you don't go to the CIA if you want to be a line cook all your life, he says. You're going to the CIA if you want to be a captain of industry. In 10 or 20 years, the people you go to school with will be leaders in the industry. At the same time, he says: “There are a lot of people who come from poor families.”.
They have debts, but they are working hard to be there. I have friends who, I realize, are already moving up the ranks. They're going to pay for everything and they're going to go far. .
