My name is Matthew Leung, I'm a chef de partie at The French Laundry.
My name is Jessica Light and I am a chef de Partie at Otium.
My name is Trevor Evarts and I'm a pastry cook and laminator in chief at
Dominique Ansel Bakery. My name is Tori Eisenstadt and I'm a lab assistant at
Milk Bar in Los Angeles. I'm Ed Maxwell and I'm the chef de Partie at Jordan
Kahn's, Destroyer. My name is Patricia Mentzer, I am the general manager of Tacocita,
a new concept by the Pecos Hospitality Group. My name is Maggie
Yazawa and I'm a freelance food writer.
ICE seemed like the best option for me, at for culinary school because I was
looking for a quality education, I was looking for a school that was well
connected with the restaurant industry, reputable sort of, education and one that
offered the least financial burden and that complete package was ICE, for me.
I decided to do both Culinary Arts and Culinary Management because I personally
just wanted to be a leader in my industry I didn't just want to be
another cog, I wanted to be the whole clock. Definitely one of the things I was
looking forward to coming to ICE was finding a foundational knowledge that
kind of stepped passed the home baking that I'd done in the past and looking
back one of my favorite lessons was definitely the first introduction I had
into laminated doughs and croissants and danishes and being able to create
those from scratch and see the process through and see the finished product, and
find the joy that I found in that. I went to NYU and I studied media
communications there and when I was looking to further my education I
decided to go to the Institute of Culinary Education as kind of a graduate
degree and really expand my knowledge in a different field in the food industry.
My first day at ICE I didn't know anyone, even in the state of California, no one.
So to now be in a room full of people that all love the same things that I
love and have the same passion as I do, was a really great opportunity to kind
of build my knowledge around, with the same people, who have the same passion
that I do. I didn't know what to expect when I came into the classes. I didn't
know who I was gonna be working with. I didn't know their experience and what I
found was a room full of people who were hungry for experience, for knowledge, for
anything related to food. Moving here from Florida was kind of a big
transition and I didn't have that many friends or family when I first got here
but having met everyone here and my instructors and my peers, everyone really
became a true family, and I remember I had a really hard time at my externship,
I was really green and I didn't really know how intense it would truly be and
my rep Jeff, he was the one that enrolled me in the program, he actually ended up
being a huge mentor and a huge supporter throughout the whole culinary process, my
schooling process, and he really pushed me to do more and stepped beyond his
typical daily role, to really push me to work harder and excel even more than I
probably would have on my own.
What really stuck out to me at ICE in the culinary program was when we started
working in teams multiple of us and it really taught me that you know whether
you're behind or ahead you're always going to be part of this team and the
whole work as a whole is on all of you and it showed me that I can do this.
One of the lessons that I remember very well is we were doing the line simulations so
we all had our different stations and we all had a certain dish revolving around
a certain ingredient and we had to kind of write the menu for it and then we
also had to have kind of a VIP option and so the two guys that I was assigned
to were some of my favorite people to work with so we made this like VIP
hamachi dish with like wasabi and tuna and it was this whole like elegant like
we dyed it with like beet juice so the edges were red and it looked like a
flower and it was it was really fun and it really was kind of the first time
that we all made a dish that we felt really confident about.
Something that all the instructors really stressed was sacrifice. I think that above the skills
that we learned tangibly, there were the lessons that they taught us about
needing to persevere, about needing to sacrifice, and I think that those were
things that I understood in my mind but I didn't fully understand until I was in
it, which is what I'm in now.
I'd always admired Christina Tosi and her style of baking, where she just kind
of throws a bunch of random ingredients together and makes this beautiful
dessert in the end and that's always been my particular way of baking, is just
kind of putting random things together, and so when the time came I staged a couple times and
eventually expressed that I wanted to do my externship at Milk Bar. And then after
the six weeks I asked if I could stay and I stayed on the production team.
When I was looking for externships I stumbled across across Destroyer during the stage
and the reason I was so hooked on them was because of the vibe there. Everyone
was all about building each other up and doing better, there's none of this
personal negativity like you'll see in some kitchens where it gets heated and
stress, we all deal with the stress appropriately and whenever we say
something to each other it's out of the care and respect for the whole
establishment and it's never, ever personal. It's because we want you to do
better. So in my first few weeks of moving to
Pasadena and being classes, our class took a field trip to Dominique Ansel
Bakery and getting to see the bakery and meet chef Dominique and see how they
operate it, I remember thinking that day that this would be such a cool place to
work in the future, not really thinking that it would happen, but then it came
time for me to externa and I was looking at places and that I might want to go
and I ended up applying and sending Chef Lee in an email and she brought me in
for an interview and a stage and she offered me a job and it was like all the
pieces kind of fell together and I was I was overjoyed.
ICE has taught me a lot of various things in a very short amount of time so
where when I got to Otium I had kind of a book in my brain of different cuisines
different techniques and so I now had a more knowledgeable idea of cooking and
that way I could kind of take what I learned in culinary school and then when
I got to Otium kind of blow it up and expand it because all the chefs there
are very much wanting to help me learn, to help me cook, to the best that I can.
What propelled me to, you know, go forward in my career into and I think to move so
quickly was this combination of my experience in the back of house and what
I learned here at ICE, they, the instructors, and the team here, really
helped me feel confident in my ability to do things and taught me everything
else I needed to know to make everything successful and easy and fun, really fun.
ICE definitely equipped me with all of the skills that I would need to succeed.
Coming from home baking obviously I had a little bit of experience but the
pastry program at ICE definitely brought me through a very intensive process of
making sure that I had every tool in my bag. I don't think I would have had the
confidence had it not been for ICE to be working at Milk Bar. I came from a
smaller bakery and I don't believe I would have made that jump so quickly
had it not been for ICE. My job as a freelance food writer has been enhanced
by the knowledge I was able to acquire the Institute of Culinary Education. It's
hard to believe that you know about 18 months ago I was working in Chicago and
in a basement of a bank and and now I am chef de Partie at the French Laundry,
which is Thomas Keller's restaurant. ICE has allowed me to transition from one
career to another and it's done so seamlessly and in just a way that I
couldn't have ever really imagined.