CULINARY ARTS INSTITUTES: THE NEW GLAMOUR

There are whole sections of bookstores devoted to cooking. People are paying several hundred dollars for a single frying pan. Kitchen appliances are becoming as fancy and expensive as sportscars. Kitchens themselves are often the biggest room in modern homes. Celebrities who've never taken a cooking course are publishing their favorite recipes. And famous chefs are becoming celebrities themselves, with publicists, managers and PR staffs conducting their every move. Cooking: it's hot. And culinary arts institutes are the new Hollywood.





Where It Began
Before the rise of celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse many people learned to cook from their mothers or used cookbooks. The cookbooks, like the classic Better Homes And Gardens book, feature great recipes and information but are not like the kind of cookbook we see now that features the chef's name prominently.

Perhaps Julia Child, who traveled overseas to learn at the prestigious Cordon Bleu culinary arts institute in Paris, was America's original celebrity chef. She was the first to have a TV cooking show. Her books became best sellers in the 1960s and 1970s. She is most famous for having made the seemingly inscrutable world of French haute cuisine accessible for everyone in her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

In Julia's footsteps have followed aficionados from James Beard to Martha Stewart to Jamie Oliver, each with their own style and fans. These chefs know not just recipes, but also how to integrate healthy cuisine into a busy lifestyle and make the most difficult foods easier to prepare. They furnish a lifestyle too, endorsing everything from pots and pans to furniture. Going to a culinary arts institute is definitely hip.





NOT Chef Boyardee.
It's been said that America's obesity has been growing by the year. But paradoxically so too is interest in healthy food, nutrition, and good diets. No longer is the ideal chef a rotund man. Today, overall fitness and health are the mark of a good chef, be they male or female.

Many people choose to go to a culinary arts institute because of an interest in healthy cuisine and choices. Culinary academies, after all, do not just offer degrees in cooking, but also in nutrition, dietetics, and other related fields.

Where To Go For Culinary Mastery
Most big cities already host at least one culinary arts institute, and many counties have an occupational training school to teach budding chefs.

And if you want to be the next Julia Child, going to a culinary arts institute does not necessarily require a foreign language. World-renowned schools in Paris, Rome, Singapore, and other cities have instruction available in English.