It’s 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon at the old Brown Hotel in Indiana, Pa., and Gary Lambert, a cherubic man wearing horn-rim glasses and a blissful smile, is tossing shallots, dry basil and sesame seeds into a blackened skillet sizzling with unsalted butter.
“This corn,” he says, dumping in a fat package of frozen kernels, “is the sweetest you’ve ever tasted.” He flips his succulent concoction in the skillet, flecking the corn with hot basil leaves.
Moments earlier, Lambert had been sauteeing tender veal cutlets over the same gas-fed burner. “I call it Veal A La Brown Hotel,” he says. “Simmered in a white wine and cream sauce.”
What we’re seeing here is a man starting a new career in cookery at age 42 while trying to support a wife and two young children. It may be a blessing in disguise.
“I love being a chef,” says Lambert, who was fired from his middle-management job with a coal company 21 months ago. “I’m my own boss. I can buy what I want. I can cook what I want.”
Finding a job like the one Lambert has takes some pluck and luck, but opportunities in hotels and restaurants are expanding at a rapid rate, partly because so many two-income couples are eating out.
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Figures compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show employment in food service expanding from 9.5 million in 1990 to 12.4 million in 2005, an increase of 30 percent. The number of trained chefs is expected to grow by 42 percent during that period.
It’s not considered a high-pay industry, with cooking school graduates often starting in a salary range of $15,000 to $30,000 a year, but an executive chef easily can earn $50,000 a year, and some who work in four-star restaurants and hotels earn much more.
Good cooks are in great demand.
“Let’s talk,” says an ad in Nation’s Restaurant News. “The Kimpton Restaurant Group, headquarted in San Francisco, with 18 restaurants located in San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland and Beverly Hills, is expanding rapidly.
“If you have 5, 6 years high-volume theme restaurant experience, great communication skills and are passionate about the restaurant business, we would like to talk to you.”
So strong is the demand for food service workers that several prison systems, notably Philadelphia’s and New York City’s, are training inmates for jobs as waiters and cooks when they get out.
There are two ways to become a chef. One is to spend a year or two in culinary school, take a job as a cook and advance into the various levels of chef certification, as defined by the American Culinary Foundation.
The other is to complete a three-year apprenticeship under a certified chef, an option that can be challenging if the chef is imperious.
“There are some cantankerous chefs out there,” says chef Albert Wutsch, who runs the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Academy of Culinary Arts, where Lambert went to school. “Some of them think they’re God. They expect you to work for nothing.”
Wutsch, who has taught cooking in Montana and Florida and catered elegant events in Palm Beach, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., often thought to be the nation’s most prestigious cooking school.
But there are hundreds of culinary programs around the country, some sponsored by community colleges or vocational schools, others operated for profit as private enterprises.
Lambert went to Indiana’s cooking school at nearby Punxsutawney (home of Groundhog Day) after his job as a maintenance planner at a coal company began to dry up. His salary had been cut from more than $40,000 a year to less than $20,000 in 1988. His job was eliminated completely in 1992.
“Cooking was a matter of survival,” he says. “My father was a fantastic cook. A cousin is doing well as a chef in Florida. I’d been a short-order cook in high school. So I said, `Let’s give this a try.’ “
Indiana’s culinary program costs $18,524 and requires 12 months of schooling, followed by a four-month “externship” at a hotel or restaurant.
Lambert was valedictorian and “most congenial” in his class of 23 and went to work in August at the remodeled Brown Hotel, a 19th Century landmark.
Most of his classmates got multiple job offers and some ended up in interesting places such as Zion National Park in Utah, the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Colonial Williamsbug and Dollywood, Tenn.
“All of our students get jobs before they graduate,” Wutsch says. “We have more job offers than students. It’s a good situation.”
Lambert earns about $20,000 a year as chef at the Brown Hotel-not a princely sum, but enough to pay bills in an inexpensive town such as Indiana. Besides, he likes what he does. “My only regret,” he says, “is that I don’t have a senior chef to work under. I have to learn on my own.”
For Lambert, this is no 9-to-5 job. He works 12-hour days, five days a week, Sundays and Mondays off, with only a student from the culinary academy in Punxsutawney to help with the cooking. Most nights he has 50 or 60 diners, some nights 120 or more.
Many or few, Lambert is a happy warrior among the jars of spices, the chopping knives, the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling of his modest kitchen at the Brown Hotel.
“One of these days,” he says, “I’m going to put on my tall hat and mingle with the guests out in the dining room. It’s good for the image. And it’s something a chef is supposed to do.”
What’s cooking in the Chicago area
The following four chef’s courses are the ones in the Chicago area certified by the American Culinary Federation.
– College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn. (708-858-2800, ext. 2315). Courses cost $25 per credit hour, and 96 hours are needed to graduate. The basic course takes two years and leads to an associate’s degree. Students are expected to work in restaurants, hotels and catering companies while in school. Shorter courses are available that lead to a certificate in culinary arts.
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– Elgin Community College (708-697-1000, ext. 7461). A three-hour course costs $111, and 60 hours are required. The program takes two years. Students can focus on the management or the culinary end, and will work in the school dining room or kitchen while in school.
– Joliet Junior College (815-729-9020, ext. 2255). The cost is $33 per credit hour for in-district students, $113 for out-of-district students. Sixty-four hours are needed to graduate. The course lasts two years.
– Kendall College in Evanston (708-866-1300). The tuition for the 21-month program is $25,000. Students work in the school restaurant and cafeteria while in school.
– For more information about training for chefs, write to the American Culinary Federation, P.O. Box 3466, 10 San Bartola Dr., St. Augustine, Fla. 32085-3466; 800-624-9458.