Orientation

Jun 11 2018

Orientation day at Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

About sixty students of all ages, from all over the world, sat down in the lines of chairs in the school’s banquet room. The proceedings started precisely on time, 8:30am.

Le Cordon Bleu representatives welcomed the new class, and launched into an introduction to the school. “Rigor,” “excellence,” “reputation” - no mention of “fun.”

They introduced the Chef instructors - the deeply experienced chefs, straight out of Central Casting for “French Chef,” who would be our professors for the program. And then we were shepherded into processing - to pick up our uniforms and equipment, and prepare for the first class.

The name “Cordon Bleu” has been associated with excellent French cuisine for centuries. In the 1500’s, King Henry III created “L’Ordre du Saint-Esprit” as the highest order of chivalry in the French Kingdom. This exclusive crew of knights and nobles knew how to throw a good party and became renowned for their over-the-top banquets, bringing in their greatest chefs looking to impress. The group’s symbol was a Cross of the Holy Spirit, worn by members at these banquets on a blue ribbon - a “cordon bleu.” The knights became known as “Les Cordon Bleus,” and the term “cordon bleu” came to be associated with excellence in French cooking.

Le Cordon Bleu as a culinary institution has been around since 1895, when French journalist Marthe Distel began writing a weekly culinary magazine, “La Cuisinière Cordon Bleu.” A small cooking school was started later that year, and has grown to be the pre-eminent school for training aspiring chefs in the French culinary tradition.

Today, Le Cordon Bleu offers nine-month diplomas in cuisine - cooking, patisserie - baking and desserts, and boulangerie - bread baking. Cuisine and Patisserie are broken into three levels - “basic,” “intermediate” and “advanced,” each three months of material. They also offer “intensive” versions of these courses - the same material but at double the pace, over six weeks. Students earn the “Grand Diplôme” when they complete all three levels of Cuisine and Patisserie - typically students looking to work in Michelin restaurants or start their own as head chefs. I am starting the “Intensive Basic Cuisine” course - so a six week crash-course through their first level of culinary art.

This orientation included students from all different courses and levels - there are about 28 in “Intensive Basic Cuisine.” Over 25 countries were represented - Korea, Tahiti, China, Israel, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Iran, India, England, Mexico, Australia, and more, and a small handful from the US. Students are spread about evenly across the entire age range, from straight out of high school - there are even a few 15-year-olds in the class - to students in their fifties and sixties. Some have no professional cooking experience. Others have won “Master Chef” in their home country.

Classes are three hours each, and broken up between “Demonstrations” (Demos) and “Practicals.”

In Demo, students watch a Chef Instructor prepare a handful of different dishes, taking notes on the specific steps, techniques, cooking times, and helpful tips to work with the ingredients correctly and improve the dish.

Then in the following Practical, students cook the dishes themselves at individual work stations, ultimately presenting their plate to the chef at the end of the class for evaluation.

The classes are taught all in French, with a translator in the room during the Demo classes to translate after the chef to English. At orientation, we are given a binder full of each of the “recipes” - just ingredient lists and measurements, with blank space below for our notes - and a glossary of hundreds of French cooking terms.

The executive chef closed the proceedings: “I don’t do much except eat what you prepare, so it better be good.”