Student Chefs Seek Taste of Fame

Wolfgang Puck laughs when he recalls how a date abandoned him on a Beverly Hills dance floor 25 years ago after he told her he was a “cook.”

Of course, that was before he became a celebrity chef, one who helped popularize haute cuisine in America by turning Spago into a brand name and a Hollywood hangout.

Then came the Food Network and a generous helping of spinoff books and magazines that further elevated cooking from a casual hobby to a glamorous profession in which the biggest stars are often male chefs, like Puck, Michael Lomonaco or Emeril Lagasse.

Spurred by this hip kitchen culture, a new and ambitious generation of foodies is flocking to culinary schools with an appetite for big-time success. For many, the aim is not only a high-paying job, but also fame. “It used to be that if a young person were going to culinary school, it would be tantamount to running off to join the circus,” said Eileen Opatut, senior vice president of programming and production at the Food Network. “It’s now a highly sought, competitive career.”

The number of culinary programs that offer certificates or associate’s and bachelor’s degrees has shot up 60% in the last five years, from 269 nationwide to 431, according to Shaw Guides Inc., which publishes education information.

Since 1994, the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena has grown from 16 students at one site to 1,200 students at four locations. Tuition runs about $35,000 for the 15-month program at the school, which is part of the Cordon Bleu network of international culinary studies.

Student Vanessa Iantorno, 20, a devotee of the Food Network and the Discovery Channel’s cooking programs, said her dream is to become an executive chef with her own cooking show -- but with a slight twist.

She wants to sing.

That doesn’t sound as far-fetched as it would have a decade ago. After all, Lagasse holds food concerts in which he cooks backed by a jazz-rock band.

“Once you acquire the skills, you can do anything you want, if you put your mind to it,” Iantorno said.

Marvin David, a 24-year-old Filipino American student, said Asian celebrity chefs such as Ming Tsai and the campy Japanese show, “Iron Chef,” inspired him to enroll in culinary school and pursue opening a Pacific Rim fusion restaurant.

“I had always toyed with the idea of being a chef,” said David, who has applied for an internship at the Playboy Mansion. “Television fueled the fire.”

Kyle Connaughton, head chef at the school’s restaurant, said the influence that the media has had on his students cannot be underestimated. But that influence has been good and bad, he said. His biggest concern is that television makes the cooking life look all too easy.

“The generation before had to seek out information about [renowned chefs] Alice Waters and Jeremiah Towers,” said Connaughton, a former pastry chef at Spago. “Now they’re presented with celebrities on TV and over the Internet. They’re able to draw more of a learning experience, but it also gives them an unrealistic look at what the industry is like.”

Christy Yoo, 21, said roughly a quarter of the people who started classes with her at the California School of Culinary Arts dropped out because TV gave them the wrong impression.

“The media has a very big impact, especially on young people,” Yoo said. “Everybody wants to be famous.”

But the road from cook to executive chef is arduous.

Experts say only a small percentage of talented graduates will end up in fine dining, let alone on television. The lucky ones will land jobs in mid-range hotels, cafeterias, cruise ships and restaurant chains.

Others will end up in low-level positions where the pay can run as little as $30,000 a year.

“Not many people are going to come straight out of school and come work at Spago or Chinois [on Main],” said Puck, referring to two of his gourmet restaurants. “But I think restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory and Houston’s -- casual dining -- will be very happy with the graduates.”

Bill Bracken, executive chef at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, said he is weary of those whose ambition exceeds their talent. He tells the story of a recent culinary school graduate who applied to be a sous chef -- the second-in-command chef -- but had yet to spend a day on the line preparing hot food.

“It’s like a medical student wanting to perform cardiovascular surgery,” Bracken said.

Still, the number of student applicants continues to climb, as the culinary industry continues to grow. Restaurant sales are projected to reach a record $426.1 billion in 2003, up 4.5% from this year, according to the National Restaurant Assn. That would represent the 12th consecutive year of growth.

As the business grows, so does the number of jobs. Restaurants employed 11.3 million workers in 2000, the most recent figures available, an analysis of Bureau of Labor statistics shows. Overall, California added 32,500 jobs in the food and beverage business sector during that period, a 3.6% increase from the previous year.

The profile of culinary students is also changing. In recent years, most applicants were older, second-career types. But that is no longer the case.

Some schools said that a large percentage of their students are right out of high school. At the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, enrollment has doubled to 1,200 in the last two years, largely from an influx of teenagers, inspired in part by television.

“It’s our largest population,” said David Chomsky, the school’s director of education. “I would attribute that growth to celebrity status. It’s now an appealing job to kids in high school.”

Elsewhere in the country, the culinary program at Johnson & Wales University has reached capacity at all five of its campuses, officials said. Based in Rhode Island, the school offers a military-like regimen that requires students to rise at 6:15 a.m. and follow strict uniform guidelines.

But officials there caution that students should take a realistic view of their career path and not be seduced by what they see on TV. Too many students are unprepared for the years of hard work -- sometimes in unglamorous settings -- that it often takes to become a top-flight chef.

“We’re not graduating chefs,” said Steve Shipley, the school’s assistant director of culinary education. “We’re graduating food-service workers. You have to pay your dues before you become an executive chef.”

Officials from the Food Network -- which is jointly owned by Scripps Howard and Tribune Co., parent company of The Times -- said they don’t want to mislead people about the profession and its hardships.

All their featured chefs have established themselves in the industry before appearing on camera, they said. Even one of the channel’s brightest young stars, 27-year-old Jamie Oliver, started as a child working in his dad’s pub in England before moving on to traditional training.

But Food Network officials also know that the journey to chefdom makes for good TV. Edison Mays Jr. is one of a handful of budding chefs at the Art Institute of California-Los Angeles being followed by camera crews from the cable channel’s reality series “Cooking School.”

He also cooked food for a program on KCAL-TV Channel 9 and is scheduled to cook for a show on SoapNet. He wants to own a “comfort-food” restaurant grounded in the French techniques he’s garnering in school.

“I feel like I’m caught up in this wave of attention,” said Mays, 26. “This work is nothing like you see on TV. It’s not like Emeril saying, ‘Bam!’ It’s about physical ability, punctuality and satisfaction.”

Indeed, professional cooks are quick to remind the younger set that they often work 12-hour days, six days a week, in oppressively hot kitchens. They warn that professional cooking in a real-life kitchen environment, with all the work-day pressures, doesn’t much resemble the relaxed atmosphere of a TV show.

“It’s not a desk job,” said Mark Peel, co-owner and head chef of the restaurant Campanile in Hollywood. Peel did not attend culinary school but 24 years ago was sent by former boss Puck to France for an apprenticeship.

“My very first job in Paris, I had to reach in and gut recently plucked, still-warm ducks before my very first cup of coffee.”

For all the positive influence that cooking shows have had on the industry, school officials said it’s important for young people to know that their chances of superstardom are slim.

“It’s dangerous to be too ambitious, whether you’re talking about being a chef or someone inspired by Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan to pursue sports,” said Mark Erickson, vice president of the Culinary Institute of America, which has campuses in California and New York.

“On one hand, it’s great to have those goals and to recognize the dedication and intense amount of work it requires. But these vaulted positions are reserved for the very few.”

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Times staff writer Karima A. Haynes contributed to this report.