So where does a culinary student go to school?

Posted on | June 22, 2009

We moved here for a few reasons, not the least of which was for me to go to culinary school. We’ve been here three months now, so I figure it is about time I told you a little about my new city.

Now, I am becoming quite fond of this place: It has great restaurants, amazing farmer’s markets, and some great food stores. But it is the atmosphere I’m trying to capture here. So let me do that by sharing a typical journey home.

Come home with me
Let’s deal with the obvious question, first: Why not the journey to school? Well, as it is usually 6:30 am, I am dopey from sleep, and the husband is driving, it wouldn’t make for much of a post. So come on home with me.

You can go home again, I do it every afternoon
I leave school, chat with the smokers gathered around the exit (always students and occasionally a chef or two who, more often than not, has bummed a cigarette from one of the students), and walk up one of those long hills where you don’t realize you are exerting all that effort until you get to the top of it and are compelled to turn around to see what just took the wind out of you. Ah. Hill. That explains it.

I generally don’t see anyone as I pant, pant, pant my way up that hill, one of the few hills around here (this place is fairly flat, but get out of town and you’ll encounter some truly serious inclines), but my world is about to get populated.

And into the city proper
Next, a wall of noise, as I pass a highway as well as one or two homeless people who are hitchhiking. I’m going home via the excellent public transportation that is one of the reasons we are here. They are going wherever their heart takes them via car and the kindness of an either very brave or very foolish driver.

On my route, I pass all sorts of hole-in-the-wall restaurants including a Thai place, a Mexican place, and a coffee place. I also, inevitably, pass at least one or two groups of high school students walking three or four abreast. The number of students may vary, but their drink of choice rarely does: A noisily slurped, and often passed hand to hand, complicated Starbucks concoction complete with proud piles of whipped cream.

I once passed a culinary student from another school who pointed at me, squealed the name of my school, grinned, and stomped on. I grinned back.

A connection.

Three blocks from my stop, I pass a store with a sign that reads “I don’t carry any cash, I’m married” as well as a glut of businessmen wearing suits with shiny elbows and cracked shoes. Two blocks from my stop, I pass a dusty, empty storefront with a “For Rent” sign on the window and a carpeting of old flyers on the floor. I also pass a woman with three grocery bags, two children, one dog and a stroller. One of the bags is going to tumble and I want to offer to help, but you just don’t do that sort of thing in a city if you don’t want to be arrested for something or other (now, if a bag does, actually, fall, the rules change and I could help gather the escaping groceries, and would).

A block from my stop I pass a very old, very short, very heavy woman with a shock of bleached hair, cherry lipstick that may have been on her lips that morning but that has long since escaped to her nose and her chin, and a frilly summer dress on top of a pair of bloated ski pants that go whisk, whisk, whisk as she walks.

She smiles kindly at me, giving me her blessing.

I smile back.

Come wait with me
At my stop, I stand, wedged between an older woman with painted-on eyebrows (they are so perfect I’m fairly sure she has used one of those kits which contains eyebrow stencils you color in) who keeps trying to talk to me (despite the fact that I am listening to my iPod) and a homeless man who, every so often, bursts into song. Loudly. And without ever taking a breath.

Eyebrows, noticing the school logo on my chef’s jacket: “Do you go to school?”

Me, pulling one ear piece out of my ear: “Pardon me?”

Homeless guy, right after he opens a folding stool, seats himself, and crosses his legs: “SHE TOLD ME HER NAME WAS BILLIE JEAN AS SHE CAUSED A SCENE THEN EVERY HEAD TURNED WITH EYES THAT DREAMED OF BEING THE ONE!”

Eyebrows: “You go to school?”

Me: “Yes. Up that street a few blocks.”

Homeless guy: “LAY DOWN SALLY NO NEED TO LEAVE SO SOON I’VE BEEN TRYING ALL NIGHT LONG JUST TO TALK TO YOU!”

Across the street, there is a group of Native Americans sitting in a circle. They are wearing jeans and shirts and shoes or boots. There is a lone Native American, standing apart from the group and wearing traditional dress. Every so often he shakes an ankle to make the attached bells tinkle or stomps his feet to make his feathers shake. People stop periodically to take his picture.

There is also a woman on a cell phone trying to back her car into a parking spot. She keeps backing up so she is half in her spot and half in the spot next to hers, pulls forward to correct it, then backs up in precisely the wrong place, yet again.

Eyebrows: “Do you like it? Your school?”

Me: “School? Oh yes.”

Homeless guy: “YOUR LIGHTS ARE ON BUT YOU’RE NOT HOME YOUR WILL IS NOT YOUR OWN!”

The woman gives up trying to straighten her car and just parks it. The Native American in his elaborate native costume starts to chant. It starts to drizzle.

Eyebrows: “What’s the school called?”

Me, buttoning my jacket: “Oh look, our ride is here.”

Home James
More often than in any other city I have ridden public transportation in, someone will offer me their seat. I turn them down, but, really, the gesture is appreciated.

Now, my ride is not that long, but it is long enough for the city to undergo a few changes. So, after I disembark and walk the rest of the way home, this is what I see:

• An insane number of glorious restaurants all stuffed with businessmen in dull-colored suits and heavy ties or wearing shirts with logos and sunglasses and women in tables of two or four or six wearing shoes with heels you know will click click with every step and impossibly big handbags containing impossibly small dogs.
• Speaking of dogs, they are everywhere, in purses, yes, but also on leashes, tethered to strollers and wrists and chair legs. Interestingly, the dogs tend to be either very big or very small, from terribly sweet great danes to those poor teacup dogs (imagine the difficulty of a vet trying to operate on one of those tiny animals, heaven forbid). I smile at all and pet as many as I can. I’ve yet to meet an unfriendly dog, but I have an unfair advantage. After a day at culinary school I surely smell like dinner.
• I also pass some amazing shops, most of which seem to sell home items, from expensive but lovely French linens to elaborate European lamps (the store has a sign warning parents to watch their children because the lamps are HOT) to garishly painted steel patio and garden sculptures which pass for art, are manufactured by the thousands, and sell for horribly inflated prices.

The clouds have passed, leaving the sun in their wake. So I pause to read the specials at a French restaurant near home. We ate there when we first arrived and I want to go back and order a ton of appetizers so we can try a lot of different dishes.

A neighbor walks by with her large, golden lab. She is a bit scattered and doesn’t remember me, but her lab does. I pet the dog’s head and he leans on me, heavily. So heavily, in fact, that I have to brace myself against a wall to support his weight. We chat for a moment, then I move on.

The last building I pass is a condo. In the nearest unit to the floor, I can see the owner has set up a teepee in the living room.

But I’m not thinking about any of this. I’m thinking about the work I have to do for school and what to do for dinner.

I’m home.

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