Californians Among First Enrollees in Novel Paris Cooking School : Ritz-Escoffier Is Beautiful, Immaculate, With Excellent Teachers

They came all the way from California to slip in the back door of the Ritz Hotel in early April, students in the first class of the Ecole de Gastronomie Francaise Ritz-Escoffier.

Jim Murray of Rolling Hills, Calif., signed up for the first 12-week diploma course, pairing up with Nacho Costa of Santa Barbara while Deborah L. Olson of Sunnyvale dropped by to sit in demonstration classes carrying no certification.

There are many cooking schools in Paris, of course, places like La Varenne, Cordon Bleu and Le Notre, but none are located in a luxury hotel. Neither are they bargains. La Varenne is about $920 a week for a 25-week diploma, while Cordon Bleu is about $505 a week for 36 weeks.

Not only that, the schools don’t take just anyone--first you have to prove you are an accomplished cook. And the fact is that most cooking schools in France are crowded, a little frumpy and something of a grind, deliberately made so in many cases on the Gallic premise that learning cuisine should be a difficult task for beginners.

$30 Demonstration

Ritz-Escoffier is no day-at-a-dime store either. A week’s training is about $700, and the full 12-week diploma course is $10,000. But one can drop by for a three-hour demonstration session with the students for as little as $30.

And the school is beautiful, immaculate, with lockers and showers, clean uniforms daily, a small library for study, possibly the best teachers in Paris, and that priceless proximity to Escoffier--in whose culinary shadow all work.

“That’s what brought me here,” said Murray, the 48-year-old founder of El Paso Cantina restaurant chain headquartered in Torrance.

“I’ve had a lifelong interest in food,” he explained. “I studied at Long Beach State, and after graduating I opened a fish-and-chips place in the San Fernando Valley, then a barbecue thing in Torrance, before opening the El Paso Cantina shops.”

Murray sold his restaurants last September, and came to Paris to spend a year unwinding from the business, “doing things I’ve always wanted to do,” he said.

So far, he’s studied at La Varenne and Ferradi cooking schools in Paris, hit the Lasanne school in Switzerland for weeks, and occasionally flew home to visit his wife, Frances, and his children, Bunny, 18, who attends St. Vincent’s in Santa Barbara, and Andy, 16, who attends Chadwick School in Palos Verde.

“The thing about Escoffier,” insisted Murray, “is that while he wrote a cookbook, you can’t use it. He said things like ‘Make a cream sauce,’ but gave no instructions on how.

“He assumed you knew how to do those darned things,” Murray said, “but as he’s dead a long time now. Escoffier’s cooking only exists as a kind of oral history.”

Olson of Olson’s Cherry Orchards in Sunnyvale agrees, adding that “classical cooking is really a matter of getting your elbows into greasy water with these guys. Cookbooks are only a suggestion of reality when it comes to fine cuisine. You’ve got to live it, in a sense.”

Olson does, as it happens, visiting France twice a year to study, in years past at La Varenne and Cordon Bleu, and more recently for weeks at a time with three-star chefs like Michele Guerard and Guy Chibois.

“I’m here for the same reasons everybody else comes,” she joked, “but, frankly, at home in California I more often make Thai or Chinese-inspired dishes of real simplicity. Maybe taking ideas from Ken Hom or Wolfgang Puck, working up simple grilled meats with lots of fresh vegetables and fruits from the garden.”

The third Californian, Costa, spends half a year in Santa Barbara and half in Madrid, where his family owns the Grand Rock Cafe, the Spanish version of the Hard Rock Cafe.

“We’re thinking about moving into more traditional restaurants in Madrid,” explained the 24-year-old. “Over in Spain, we still think the highest culinary expression is French, so when I leave here with my diploma I’ll have some practical experience when my family makes food decisions about restaurants there.

“Besides,” he joked, “for me it’s fun to cook--even if it’s with guys with five thumbs like Jim.”

American-Born

Costa’s informality typifies the atmosphere at the new school, as American-born director Gregory Usher quietly begins a new era in cooking arts here. The former Oregonian and graduate of the University of Oregon was once director of La Varenne and Cordon Bleu.

Affable but driven, the 38-year-old said he wants his new school to be to cooking what the Ritz is to hotels--”the most highly regarded in the world.” And to that end he has assembled a formidable faculty, including Christian Guillut, a father of two who began cooking at 16 at Barrier, Charles Barrier’s celebrated three-star restaurant in Tour.

The Ritz’s head chef, Guy Legay, holder of the Legion of Honor, George Lepres, chief sommelier of the hotel and one of the world’s leading wine authorities, and a bevy of two-and-three-star chefs from throughout France will visit and teach the students, under Usher’s still evolving program.

“Of course,” Murray said one afternoon to Costa and me, as we struggled to make the Ritz’s version of Creme Brulee, “no matter how nice the teachers are, you still gotta cook this stuff.

“Maybe that’s what makes it so much fun,” Costa declared. “Cooking doesn’t recognize power or money or names--only sweat and hard work.”

The Ritz is in the Place Vendome, in the heart of Paris. For information, phone Leading Hotels of the World (800) 223-6800. For more information on the Ritz-Escoffier cooking school, and a complete listing of the $30 demonstration sessions for the next three months, write to Gregory Usher, director, Ecole de Gastronomie Francaise, Ritz-Escoffier, 15 Place Vendome, 75001 PARIS, France.

His telephone number is 011-33-1-42603830. It costs about $1 a minute to telephone Paris from Los Angeles and everyone speaks English.

The school will send a brochure in English, a schedule of classes and demonstrations and an application on which to book hard-to-get seats at specific demonstrations by jotting in a major credit card number, and thus guarantee a seat to that specific demonstration. Guests at the hotel get a free tour and demonstration, depending on availability.

Twenty-six airlines now fly from America to Paris, and several offer nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Charles De Gaulle Airport an hour north of Paris.