News : Stage Is Set for School ‘Food Fight’

Forget Time Warner and Walt Disney. In the culinary world, the real corporate battle of the decade seems to be shaping up between two of the country’s top professional cooking schools.

The Culinary Institute of America, long a prime training ground for talented young chefs, opened a West Coast campus in the Napa Valley in late August.

Well-known for its manorial campus on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River just outside Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the CIA has put its western campus on just as impressive a site. Roughly $14 million was spent renovating Greystone, the venerable cha^teau-like former home of Christian Brothers Winery in St. Helena.

But just as final preparations were being made on the old stone building, the California Culinary Academy--long regarded as the CIA’s closest West Coast competitor--announced that it is moving East. Within the next month, CCA will complete acquisition of the Manhattan-based New York Restaurant School.

“The two are entirely coincidental,” says Alexander Hehmeyer, president and CEO of California Culinary Academy, Inc. “They are teaching continuing education. That’s for professionals already in the business coming in for short courses. Our focus is the professional training program culminating in a two-year degree.”

Operating out of its San Francisco headquarters since 1977, CCA has expanded rapidly since it was purchased in 1987 by a group headed up by Theodore G. Crocker. Besides chef instruction, it produces a widely broadcast television show, “Cooking at the Academy,” and has published nearly 30 cookbooks. A for-profit school, CCA made its first public offering of stock in 1993.

For its West Coast start-up, the CIA has amassed an impressive roster of teachers, led by former Chez Panisse chef Catherine Brandel. Among those signed up for classes in the first semester are such well-known California chefs as Barbara Tropp, Joyce Goldstein, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken.