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Sun Valley Culinary Institute-‘As Cooks, We’re Actors’
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Wednesday, September 28, 2022
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Chef coats and hats replaced the traditional graduation gowns and mortarboards. And each young man got a cast iron triangle dinner bell, along with their graduation certificate.

And, with that, the Sun Valley Culinary Institute graduated its first class.

The Culinary Institute’s first class started with four young men and it finished with four young men.

“A 100 percent graduation rate is one any academic would be so proud of,” said the Institute’s director Karl Uri.

Chef Instructor Geoff Felsenthal choked up as he congratulated the students in front of their families and Culinary Institute board members.

“It’s like having a child. You see them crawl, you see them walk, you see them go out and come back. We grow together. We learn together. They’re entering a business that is special. I’ve been in the business 40 years and I still get excited to come to work—food brings us together. But this business is tough. To be special you have to immerse yourself in the culture. You have to want to be better every day—if you don’t make a better chicken, someone else will.”

Student Curtis Ginnetti has already taken what he learned in the class and catered a wedding. And Jonathon Waters has landed a position with a resort hotel on a U.S. military base at the Bavarian ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Earlier, the students had conceived and created a luncheon for the chefs who gave them apprenticeship experience, including the lodge at Brundage Ski Area, Sun Valley Club, Ketchum Grill, CK’s and the Valley Club.

As they fed mousse into cups they critiqued it—the cream could be a little stiffer and sweeter to counteract the bitterness of chocolate, Felsenthal offered.

“But not bad. Now, how are you going to present it?” he said, as they determined they would serve it in ramekins with chocolate shavings and crushed peanut butter chips.

Throughout it all, instructor Joe Tocci reminded them of the importance of customer service: “Some restaurants have chefs able to spot VIPs and say, ‘That’s John—he owns a Gulfstream and he likes his wine at 22 degrees.”

Sam Hess of Brundage Mountain had nothing but praise for the program: “Curtis came in and he knew how to run a kitchen, he had great leadership, he could teach the others in our program.”

Ginnetti admitted that he still gets a little nervous when he and others serve up a menu they’ve created to a roomful of guests.

“But I tell myself that I’ve guided plenty of whitewater raft trips and this is only food,” he added. “Just practicing techniques over and over in a supportive environment made it easy to go out and work in the real world.”

Ayla Humphreys said she was pleased with how happy the cooking program had made her brother Drake: “He loves what he’s learning and now he wants to cook for me and mom all the time.”

The Culinary Institute is a unique program in which students spend two months learning knife skills, various ways of preparing fish and chicken and more. They then spend the busy ski season in Sun Valley working at area restaurants.

They return to the Culinary Institute during spring slack where they learn baking skills before going out and working at Sun Valley-area restaurants during the busy summer season.

They graduate with little of the debt that they might incur at many culinary programs, even making money as they work for the various restaurants.

“In March 2020 many of us were in this room cutting the ribbon for this new program, and we knew something was gong on but we did not know it would take three and a half years to get to the first graduation,” said Uri, noting how the pandemic unceremoniously stalled the Institute’s best-laid plans.  “A year ago Monday, these students started school. Now we’ve come full circle.”

The Culinary Institute has doubled its class this for the 2022-23 year with seven students taking part. They hail from the Wood River Valley, Boise and even beyond to Indiana. One is a vet. And the class has its first female student—Ana Smith, who has already contributed by baking dozens of red velvet cupcakes and brown butter chocolate chip cookies for the graduation.

To maintain plenty of hands-on experience, half of the students are meeting in the day and the other half at night.

Felsenthal had a few parting words for the first class:

“As cooks, we are actors. We perform every day and we have an audience coming to our restaurant every day to see what we do. And I know at the end of the day if I did my job well, I made a lot of people happy.”

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