Mixer at FCI

As I mentioned before, the primary reason I created this blog is so that I can document my experience at culinary school. I've always wanted to go to culinary school, but it wasn't until I actually moved to New York and just a couple months ago that I started seriously thinking about it. I knew I wanted to go to a school in New York City and after a lot a reserach, it came down to either the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) and the French Culinary Institute (FCI). I took tours of both, but decided to apply to FCI because I really wanted to learn classic technique, but mostly because of their in-house restaurant, L'Ecole, which ICE did not have. So I applied and got accepted back in September. This past Monday, I went to an enrolled student happy hour and dinner at L'Ecole and met some other students, both in the pastry and culinary program, starting at various times from January until April. The dinner was fun and totally informal and I got to meet a lot of other people that shared the same interests as me - among other things the disdain for the Food Network show "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee" and the love of the lovely and big-haired Giada de Laurentiis. The student cooks (level 3 and 4), who prepared everything we ate, came out and fielded questions at the end of dinner. I had a great time, but I payed for it with a wine headache the next morning - ugh, too much wine is not a good thing.