The Restaurant Guys

Nicholas Harary’s Controversial View of Culinary Education

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 138

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This is a Vintage Selection from 2007


The Banter

The Guys kick off the show discussing date night plans that don’t involve food.  Spoiler, there aren’t many.


The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys welcome back Nicholas Harary, owner of Restaurant Nicholas. The Guys quip that newborn Nicholas Jr. may start work in the kitchen immediately then they discuss the balance of family and work in a life of hospitality.  The conversation moves Harary's passionate tirade against the state of culinary education and what he’s doing at his place to improve the experience for everyone. 


The Inside Track

The Guys have known fellow New Jersey restaurateur Nicholas for years. While he is a culinary school graduate, he speaks out against the current institution and says this about its students.

“They’re going to the best schools in the world to learn their craft. They’re getting charged ridiculous amounts of money, but they’re not being prepared to do anything,” Nicholas Harary on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2007

Bio 

Nicholas Harary is an award-winning chef and restaurateur best known for founding Restaurant Nicholas, one of New Jersey’s most acclaimed fine-dining destinations. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Harary earned top honors from The New York Times and Zagat before reimagining his concept into Barrel & Roost, a modern, chef-driven comfort food restaurant in Red Bank. Alongside his wife Melissa, he also runs Nicholas Creamery, offering artisanal small-batch ice cream. Harary is a published cookbook author and passionate about food, family, and hospitality. 

Info

Nicholas’ current restaurant

https://www.barrelandroost.com/


Nicholas Creamery 

https://www.nicholascreamery.com/

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Mark:

Morning there, Marky. Good morning, Francis. How are you this morning? I'm doing

Francis:

great. Really good. I, I wanna discuss something. It was an interesting email correspondence and, and correspondence I had with a cousin of mine mm-hmm. Who made a reservation in the restaurant. I, uh, and he said, cousin Francis, you gotta help me out here. I want a great date, want a special night? How do I make this night special? Was someone he cared about. Mm-hmm. A great deal. Mm-hmm. And it got me to thinking about, so you needed,

Mark:

he needed his, your A material, you needed my A material, you needed your best stuff.

Francis:

And, but, so we got him a reservation in the restaurant, and it was, and he's a, he's a really great guy. Mm-hmm. And he got her flowers and there were flowers waiting for her at the restaurant. That's a stuff, nothing too ostentatious, not a dozen roses. Four roses, two pink, two red, classy guy. Right. And I got to thinking about what people do for dates and it's about restaurants. Mm-hmm. Most, most of what we do is we go out to dinner, but sometimes I feel that it can all be just going out to dinner. You know, and so I looked online. Well,

Mark:

dinner, I mean, dinner is a good place to go out, obviously for a date. It's, it's wonderful because it's totally interactive and you talk, you, you have, you talk, but you also have something to talk about. Mm-hmm. Things keep changing in front of you. Yeah. You have a, you have the scenery of what's around you. You have the people that are around you. You have the people who keep interjecting into your meal. you know, the waiter comes over and talks about, and the food is different in the wine, the hebe or some new. Fish that you've never heard of. So you have something there. There's a lot to talk about when you're at a restaurant

Francis:

or even, or even if it's just a pizza. Mm-hmm. I mean, as the food goes by you. But what, what I thought was interesting was I said, you know, when I think about it, when we get together with friends. If I go out on a date, um, most often that's the default date is dinner. Mm-hmm. Or food or something food related. Right. And I think that's, that's very primal. You know, we all come together around the communal fire, you know, that's very, very

Mark:

primal. Well plus,'cause you and I never do anything for like 20 minutes, so it's gotta be four hours long. So you gotta think, well, what can I do for four hours? Right.

Francis:

So eat is the answer. But I looked online to, to look at what people would do. I was curious of what people would do. Without dinner for a date if you wanna go on a date for non-restaurant dates. Right. So I came up with, at msn.com, I came up, uh, Lisa Ola Cher, um, I'm not getting her name right, but Lisa we're sure of that. Cher wrote an article called In the Dating and relating section@msn.com called Nine Great Non Dinner Dates. And I thought, oh, I found it the Holy Grail. We're gonna find some stuff that's, you know, not, not restaurant related, right? Doesn't have any, anything to

Mark:

do with food or you want, you wanna

Francis:

check out what the top nine non dinner days, all you wanna check'em out? Tell me. Ready? Number nine, go on a food tour. Isn't that going to a restaurant? That's what I do. I your walking shoes have the tasting menu and it's a food tour and get ready to discover it's parts of your neighborhood where they have all sorts of local food. Okay. Number eight for the non dinner dates go off for tapas.

Mark:

Well, it's not dinner. It's kind of like hor d'oeuvres. It's, you know, it's not quite there. We're not getting

Francis:

away from the food and drink thing. This number seven. Number seven in the non, non-food, uh, tea. Go to a tea shop.

Mark:

And shop for tea or drink tea? No. Drink tea. Drink tea. That's rather, rather than coffee house tea shop. Tea shops and tea shops are coming up all over the place and they're really cool and I think people are really starting to appreciate tea.

Francis:

Not really a He-Man date though. I gotta, I like tea Man. Take it easy on me. I, I gotta take, I really like tea. You three 30 pounds and you were a heavyweight wrestler. Why you, why you gotta pick Ont though? Because you're three 30 pounds and you were a heavyweight wrestler. No, you can wear a pink shirt too. Me? I can't pull off the pink shirt. All right. Tea shops. Um, I'm not fat enough. You gotta exaggerate my weight. Know. Stop it. Okay. Um, amusement parks. We have a non dinner date. We have a non dinner date. Amusement parks. That's good. You can have the hotdog and the like. So we have, one of these is non-food related.

Mark:

Well, except you have to have popcorn and cotton candy and hot, hot dogs at the music park. Yeah, it,

Francis:

it's the rise, uh, non dinner date. Uh, idea number five. Food festivals. This lady's really not achieving her her goal in this article, but I understand it because I do the same thing. I'm like, well, where could we go? We could go here for dinner. Well, the

Mark:

problem is you take somebody out to a movie on a date and you spend two hours looking at the movie and you don't spend any time interacting with the person. Right. And I, after all, what is dating about? It's about getting to know the person that you're with.

Francis:

Yeah. It's about getting fat with the person you're with. That's all you do is go out and eat. Lemme read the rest. Non dinner date number four. Go to a wine tasting or beer tasting. Well, it's not, it's not food. It's, you better eat some food when you go there. Number three, and this is increasingly popular as we see more of these around our area, especially in New York, is, um, non non dinner date. Uh, idea number three, go for a dessert bar.

Mark:

Well, that would be after the dinner date, you could go to dessert bar. One of the things that, uh, has really popped up and is popping up more and more around the city is the dessert bar. And I, and I think that's, I think that's cool. And I, you know, what I think would be a great dinner date. What? Go out, make some, make dinner at home and then when you're done with dinner at home, go out to a dessert bar. I mean, I think, I think that might be a lot of fun.

Francis:

I prefer they go out to dinner and then come home for dessert.

Mark:

Oh, you, you what? Dirty man. I'm chased. You're dirty.

Francis:

Uh uh. Non dinner Date number two. Id number two in the countdown. Go to a farmer's market and buy some food.

Mark:

But then what do you need to do? And then well go home and cook it. Which, which by the way, I think is a, is a great date. Yeah. I love cooking. Okay. Going and picking out the food with whoever you're, you're going out with and gonna have the date with prepping the meal, doing the meal. Having the meal together, that's a great way to get to know somebody. Well, that's a great way to learn about, because what are you gonna learn when you're out shopping for food? You're gonna learn about where somebody came from. You're gonna learn about their family. You're gonna learn about their traditions. You're gonna learn about the foods. They, as a kid, you're gonna learn about the things that are important to them.

Francis:

And even if, and even if you're not, you're not both cooks. And one of you is cooking dinner for the other'cause I've been in that situation where I'm cooking and somebody's sitting having a glass of wine while I cook. That's really nice way to spend time together. Mm-hmm. That's a really nice way to spend time together, but still food related does not work. So the number one non dinner date idea on msn.com was pick your own produce. Don't know like what they mean. Well, you know, I

Mark:

like the last weekend I went to Whiteman's Farms and we went to Apple picking. You know, that's, it's a lot of fun. I took, well of course we took the kids and the kids enjoy it more than, than the adults. But you know, you get your little apple picker and you each way up there and you, it's all food. And you pick your apple and then you sit down on a little bench and you eat an apple that you smuggled that you didn't pay for yet, and it taste all the better.'cause you're stealing it. You're a complete dork. You realize that? Yeah, you're a complete dork. Come on, apple pickings fun, pumpkin chicken's. Fun. That's why these places are so popular. Their work. Can I just tell you, interject for one second? Yes. We went to Whiteman's Farm, which is in, in Morristown, New Jersey. I'm telling you, there were 5,000 people. I, I mean, I've been to baseball games where there haven't been this many people. Just apple picking. On a Sunday afternoon, there was a line to. Earn. So you could pay for the right to go pick apples. Mm-hmm. Then you went and pick apples. Then there was a line to pay for the apples that you picked for, I mean like half an hour lines. Then if you wanted to go buy an apple pie, you stood on another line. If you wanted to go on a hayride, you had to stand on a line to buy a ticket, to stand on a line, to go on a hayride. It was a zoo.

Francis:

Um, and I think it's a great idea for a date. All I'm saying is we are so food centric in our, in our country, and that's, that's not a bad thing. Mm-hmm. That this woman wrote this article trying to come up with the same idea that I was with, with, you know, dates that don't resolve, revolve around food. And yeah, there's kayaking and bowling and, uh, you know, stuff like that, which is, which is fun too. Mm-hmm. But most of, when we come together, and I think this is the point of this article, and I'm trying desperately to find a point in this segment, is, is the, the point is that we come together over food and wine and that's a good thing. And that's very basic. And that's why we do this show. And that's, that's, that's what we talk about all the time. And we'll be talking more about that. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys, And today we're talking yet again with, uh, one of our favorite restaurateurs in New Jersey. He is actually our favorite rest restaurateur in New Jersey after ourselves, Nicholas Ferrari owns Restaurant Nicholas, uh, in Middletown. Hey, Nicholas. How's it going today?

Mark:

How's it going, Nicholas? I'm doing well. Yeah. Nicholas had some big news. We'll, we'll share with our listenership recently had a, uh, his first child, Nick Jr.

Speaker:

Don't call him.

Mark:

I was gonna send you a T-shirt, I have to tell you. So,

Francis:

so Baby Nicholas isn't how long till you make him start working in the restaurant?

Nicholas:

Uh, he's already been here once or twice. He's got a little uniform and everything, you know? I have believe you. And that's sick.

Francis:

actually I think one of the things that's very interesting is you had the baby with your wife, thank Kevin, who was also your partner in the restaurant. That's gotta be a big adjustment for the both of you.

Nicholas:

Yeah, it is a little bit, you know, we've been planning for it for a while though, so, um. We, we had systems in place that, uh, handle that. And actually, um, Melissa still comes in in the evening for a couple hours to help me with the books and do kind of stuff. You're tough. Yeah. Well, that's how we roll here. Here's what I'm

Mark:

gonna tell you, Jennifer. My wife did that as well. Uhhuh, until our second child was born. Who's talking about two? We have one. And then she told me to go away. Yeah.

Nicholas:

Now, but Melissa's a big piece of the restaurant. We can't just pull her out and just expect everything's the same. So, um. That's not how we did it. And, we live very close to the restaurant and, you know, we have full-time help at the house to help, uh, with this. And, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, try to do it the old European way.

Mark:

I have, I have no doubt that your restaurant won't suffer.

Francis:

I, I think it's very interesting. People may not realize, and of course, Nicholas, you do and Mark, you do, and, and, and so many of our friends do that restaurant people. Have to, you know, we have families that we love. We're all about communal meals, yet we miss many of the meals with our families. And making a family work with a restaurant business is maybe, uh, we have some different choices to make and some different challenges than people who may own, own a store that's, that closes at five o'clock or even six or seven or eight o'clock at night. There's a huge challenges with having family and restaurant. I mean, don't you guys find, I mean, you're, you're more qualified to talk about that than both of you.

Nicholas:

Well, mark probably is right now more than I am. But, um, yeah, there's obviously huge sacrifices that need to be made and, uh, our, our plan, our hopes are to, you know, have a balanced situation, uh, with the, uh, understanding of the fact that we are restaurateurs. We actually have a table in the kitchen that, uh, I, when I originally thought of it, I did think of it as a table that, uh, Melissa and I and uh, Nicholas will have dinner. Um, you know, once he gets to a certain age and, and we, we have a house close to the restaurant for that reason so that I can go home in the middle of the day and, and see him and, you know, I do want to be, uh, part of his, uh, his growing up. Um, and you know, that's the plan.

Mark:

Yeah. And at the same time, at the level at which we work. It is a lot of hours. It's very demanding. And if you want to be great, if you want to be great at this, at at Restauranting, then you have to make certain sacrifices. But at the same time, you need to kind of put a wall up and say, I this line, we can't cross. But

Francis:

I also see with both of you guys, and especially you, mark, I mean for those of you out there who don't know, mark has four kids and Nicholas has just joined the, the team of restaurateurs with kids. Pretty soon they'll be able to feel the baseball team among them for the, with their families only if Nicholas is

Mark:

gonna have four more, the uh, well, the moms and dads can play too.

Francis:

But the challenge, I think there are unique challenges to the fact that a restaurant. Is not like, I mean many businesses are nine to five, but you can come in later, leave early and, and most of the rest of the support systems that society gives us are to support families that are nine to five. So childcare is, if you want daycare, for example, you can find daycare. Well, you can't find night care. You know that there are no night care facilities for respirators to drop off their kids at three in the afternoon. Yeah. They're called grandparents Francis. Exactly. So I don't know. I think that's very interesting and I It must be very, very challenging. Good luck to you guys. Well, it's been exciting so far. Good luck to you guys. My plans are doing Yeah, you're still on that honeymoon period though. My, my plans are doing just fine.

Mark:

Nicholas, so you and I were having a little discussion just uh, off the cuff the other day. As you want to do, as we have want to do. You know, we're, we're friends, we've been friends for a long, long time, and you got on a little tirade about restaurant schools and, uh, some of the things where you feel that restaurant schools aren't worth the money that they're charging. You wanna talk about that for just a moment or two or 10?

Nicholas:

Yeah, sure. Um. My comment is on culinary schools. Um, I've kind of been observing this, uh, for the last few years and I just think it's progressively getting worse.

Mark:

Now. You went to restaurant school, you went to ccia? Yeah, I went to Culinary.

Nicholas:

Oh yeah. I, I don't normally say that anymore'cause I've taken it off my resume, but I am not proud of the students that I've been seeing, um, coming from that school or most any school. And it's, I don't necessarily blame the students for it. I, I think it's the curriculum. It hasn't changed. I graduated in nine, uh, 15 years ago, whatever, how many years ago that was, but, uh, 92 9 3.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Nicholas:

Um, and the curriculum's the same today as it was then, and that's unacceptable. Um, the difference however, is when I went to culinary school, I paid$30,000 for the whole program, which was a lot of money back then. Sure. But that's what I paid the kids today. I know I have externs, I have kids who come outta school. They pay a hundred thousand dollars to go to the same, it's,

Mark:

it's 90 plus to go to, to go to culinary students. Right. Now, here's

Nicholas:

the problem. They are not preparing them to work in a restaurant like this. They're not preparing'em to work in a restaurant like yours. Mm-hmm. But they're also not preparing them to work in, um, corporate. Uh, contract dining, which is where 50% of these kids go now, because these, these corporate contract, uh, dining institutions go up to schools, recruit them, and then offer them far more than a restaurant could offer them. Right. It's, it's not

Mark:

just recruit them, it's, it's, it's offering them the salaries that they need in order to pay off the loans that they've accrued.

Nicholas:

That's correct. And here is the gigantic problem. What did you go to culinary school for? If you were gonna go work in a place that you are going to open up cans and boxes of mixes and work with bases instead of making real stocks.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Nicholas:

And this is the problem, you would not go to MIT to go work at Best Buy selling computers. You would not go and have a, uh, criminal justice degree and go be a security officer in a shopping mall. And that's exactly what these kids are doing. They're going to the best schools in the world. I'm not just talking about the school I graduated from. Mm-hmm. I'm talking about most culinary schools that I've run across. They're gonna the best schools in the world to learn their craft. They're getting charged, um, ridiculous amounts of money, but they're not being prepared to do anything. And this is, this is the problem in schools these days, they. Teach the same things they were teaching me when I was in school. That stuff was already out of date. Mm-hmm. Um, they were teaching stuff that you would be working with in the seventies. I was in the early nineties. Now they're teaching stuff that would be in the seventies and we're in the year 2007. These kids learn how to make bechamel sauces and volute days and all kinds of great things.

Francis:

When's the last time you went to a restaurant and saw Bechamel on the menu? Well, here's, here's what

Nicholas:

I say to my guys. You know, talked to my, my entire kitchen staff graduated from a culinary school and we've talked about this at length. And they said, yeah, but don't you think you need to know those things? And I said, yeah, I don't think there's a problem with learning those things. Mm-hmm. I have no problem with that. But they spend ridiculous amount of time studying these classic sauces. And the problem is, is if you go to work in a place that still uses those classic sauces, I promise you, they don't make'em from scratch. They use bases and all kinds of mixes. Because if you're in a place that's still working in these, right, because

Mark:

those are out of date,

Nicholas:

they're out of date, that they obviously aren't as concerned with. With the way, uh, you know, things are being done today, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense anymore to learn those. Well, if you know them and you go to a place like Restaurant Nicholas, we're never gonna make those kind of sauces in that style. So therefore, you've wasted time. Now catch this. When you're in culinary school, you spend six weeks. Six weeks studying just the base of those sauces on how those sauces are made, and then the entire rest of the time you're there. You talk about those sauces, but six weeks times that now, right. You need, you need

Mark:

to look at those sauces from a historical perspective. That's exactly right. But looking at them as a, as part of what most restaurants, high end restaurants in the country are doing right now doesn't make sense.

Francis:

We're gonna leave this Nicholas as a cliffhanger. Today we're talking with our friend Nicholas Harra. Nicholas owns, we think, the third best restaurant in New Jersey. No, that's not that for our own, of course. No. Nicholas is unquestionably one of the best restaurateurs anywhere. We were talking before the news about how Nicholas feels and he is making some darn good points about how culinary schools may not be worth it. They're, they can cost you a hundred thousand dollars to send your kid through a whole program and. People may come out of culinary schools with information that's really not relevant or useful. You were saying before the break, Nicholas, that these students spend six weeks working on the basic sauces that you would find in old French textbooks, which really aren't made anymore.

Nicholas:

Right. And roughly that cost them$6,000.

Francis:

To learn how to do sauces that no one uses

Nicholas:

them. They come to my restaurant, I'll teach'em for 50 bucks and a half an hour, how to make sauces that you'll never, how to make when you go, when you go to, um, accounting school, they don't teach you not to use a calculator because we've invented something called a calculator that you, you have to use with the, the tools and the techniques that are modern. But in this old classic style, they teach it that way. And the big problem, like I said.$30,000 to go to school for, you know, you get a degree and and you come out. I'm all for that. I have no problem with that. If there's a school out there that still costs that amount of money, I think it's a good thing. I don't think schools are a bad idea. I think when you're gonna pay a hundred thousand dollars to go to school, what it's forcing the kids to come out and do is take a job they not normally would have to take. And I have all these kids who come to me with, with degrees from culinary schools and they wanna work and. They, they wanna start as sous chefs, and I gotta tell you there's not, and it's not gonna happen. And I then understand their position. Their position is that I have to make this amount of money because I have all this debt to pay off.

Mark:

Well, what happens is, and I, and I'll tell you from my experience as a restaurant owner, what happens is these kids come outta school and they don't have the practical skills that they need. They, they are at a level of the guy who should be picking the good berries from the bad berries sometimes. That's exactly right. And. That's, you know, and not that necessarily a bad thing. We all need to start somewhere. Not, not only, but if they don't have restaurant experience in addition to their culinary experience, they, and they, and you're right, they come in and they say, okay, I'm ready to be your sous chef, which is, which is your second or third in command. Mm-hmm. And. They really are only qualified to be one of your, your entry level people.

Francis:

Well, not only not give them the skills to come in and be even a line cook on your line. And I find that, you know, and I'm sure Nicholas, you find the same things. These kids are very often surprised, especially the ones that went to culinary school with very little restaurant experience. Beside

Nicholas:

that, which is everybody now, right? Mm-hmm. So everybody wants to be the next Bobby Fla in Amarillo Coffee.

Francis:

Well, and, but they come out of culinary school and they, they're, you know, you're making salads. I, you don't know how to work the line No. On an a la carte restaurant. And so you're gonna

Nicholas:

be paid as such. And here's the thing. The best chefs in America who are American chefs did not go to culinary. Or you can start naming them all day long. But I mean, Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, Patrick O'Connell, these guys did not go to culinary school. They did a European style apprenticeship. If you look at the best chefs in America who are not. American, John George, Eric Repair. You know, you go on down the list. These guys did European style apprenticeships. Mm-hmm. They did not go to specific culinary schools because a culinary school has its merits, but it is not to be a great chef, it's to do other things. If you want to be in contract service dining, um, in some corporate, um, you know, office building somewhere where you feed 1200 people in a half an hour, that might be the best thing to do. But I think that these. Kids watch their food network and they want to be the next grade chef and they watch Iron Chef and they can't wait to do all this stuff and they go to culinary school and they think that's what they're gonna learn. because the schools promote how they're the best at this and the other things, and they, they don't do those kinds of things. So at Restaurant Nicholas, what we started was a apprenticeship program. Mm-hmm. And, uh. It's a two year program. And my promise is that someone spends two years here learning, first of all, they'll have a hundred thousand dollars more in their pocket when they're done because they're not gonna have to pay it off to a culinary school. And they will learn 10 times what they would learn in a culinary school and be able to work in a restaurant of the caliber of restaurant Nicholas. as soon as they're done. Now, what they won't know how to do is they won't know how to do contract court for dining.'cause I don't do that and I don't have any desire to teach that. And if somebody wants to go and do that, then they should. What they should do is not go to culinary school. They should go to like some kind of school, go to

Mark:

EXO and do it. Yeah.

Nicholas:

And they should go to some kind of management school, but I don't understand why kids pay so much money and I have so many parents who ask me, what school should my. Son or daughter goes to, and I feel badly because everybody thinks their kids should go to school of some sort because that's how we do things in America. Everyone's some kind of college, but this is a trade. You would not go to be a master carpenter by going to school for it. You would go and do an apprenticeship and that's how it's still done in America with unions and plumbers and. builders of all sorts, that it's not something you read out of a book. It's something that your, your hands, your muscle reflex, your muscle memory needs to be taught on how this stuff is done and it's an apprenticeship.

Mark:

Here's one place where I'm gonna disagree with you slightly. I think that everybody who goes into the restaurant business should take some accounting classes. I think that everybody who goes into the restaurant business should take some business, business law classes. I think that everybody, yeah, when

Nicholas:

I went to the culinary, uh, when I went to the school, I went to, um. I spent seven days in business law and I spent. Seven days in an accounting class. Mm-hmm. 14 days. Mm-hmm. That's what you're taught.

Mark:

Yeah. That's great. Do you wanna go wrong with that? No, that's, well, I, I think it should be more than that. Well,

Nicholas:

no, it's not. And you see, here's the, you see what I'm saying? Yeah, of course. Sure. That's why, that's the problem. It's not that, and I don't disagree with you. I just don't know that you should be gonna culinary school paying a hundred thousand dollars. Oh. What I'm,

Francis:

what I'm saying is I think that you should take those sorts of classes.

Nicholas:

You can go to your local community college.

Francis:

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I think that there are a lot of folks who, who, I mean, you and I both know Nicholas, or all three of us know who. Are very good at cooking, are very good at managing the kitchen, but then they want to go and open their own place and you know, if you want, if your aspiration is to be a chef and that's what you want to be, that's. That's one set of skills. But if your aspiration is also to own your own business, at some point you've gotta learn a little bit about real estate, business law, cash flow. You don't teach static in

Nicholas:

culinary school

Francis:

law, but no, no. What I'm saying is not from culinary school. I think you should look, seek schooling for that elsewhere in addition to your, but even as a

Mark:

chef Nicholas, you're using math and accounting and and cost benefit analysis and 100%

Nicholas:

I absolutely am, but I did not learn that in culinary schools. What I'm trying to say to you, I did not, of course. I did not learn that there, um, I learned that in the field and when I was in school, I had to design a restaurant that was, you know, had to be a successful operating restaurant. It was like a 6,000 square foot restaurant. Um, it had like a 4,500 square foot kitchen. It was gonna, it was gonna make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I got an A on the project and I look back and I still save it. It's still in, uh, my office at home, you know, and it's a joke.

Francis:

It's funny, uh, I know someone who, who handed in a business plan that looked much like the stage left business plan, but because as we were formulating it for a long time, uh, yeah. And the, and the professor came back and said, that's ridiculous. It'll never

Mark:

work. I'm gonna tell you that my wife worked with us in, in formulating the business plan for, for stage left, and she handed it in to her professor. Mm-hmm. Who, uh. Was actually told her ridiculous. Told her it was a ridiculous plan, gave her like a C minus on it and said, go back to the drawing board. Forget about it.

Francis:

We've invited him in for dinner, but he hasn't come. That's funny. Well, now when you, you've set up this apprenticeship program, who are the takers? Where are you finding the people to, to, to get, to jump on basically

Nicholas:

how, um, we, we, how it's worked is we have someone who comes to us a, a young. A student, a prospective student who says, I wanna spend two or three months in a kitchen like yours to really see what it's like before I go to culinary school. And then I read them the riot act and tell'em what I think. Uh, of that. And, uh, they have a decision. Of course, it's volunteer, you know, you wanna do it or don't. and you can take a look at it from the merits of the program. If I have to talk to parents about it, I, I will. like I said, I'm disgusted at the fact that these kids, these parents of kids are spending the kind of money that it, that you could, you know, you can go to, uh. For school and then come out and be able to make five times what a chef makes. Mm-hmm. And nine outta 10 people who graduate from these schools that cost a hundred thousand dollars a year. This is a real statistic. Nine out of 10 of them inside of 10 years will not be cooking.

Mark:

Wow.

Nicholas:

Now.

Mark:

That's a scary statistic, man. Now

Nicholas:

I have 15 people who work in the kitchen of restaurant Nicholas. 15 people, every one of'em a culinary school graduate. So in essence, I have$1.5 million of education

Speaker:

walking around the

Nicholas:

kitchen. Now, every one of them had to start in the same station and learn the same things, and. Every one of my guys went through the, the A system to learn.

Mark:

Nicholas actually you have$15 million of culinary, culinary education.'cause for the 10 guys you have there are 90 not cooking now.

Nicholas:

Yeah. Well that's, and so when you look at it like that and you start realizing, you know, when you watch the Food Network, it has been great for our industry. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. With the food arts and the all kinds of things that are going on, it's all been great for our industry. It's been great for the culinary schools pockets. They're making huge dollars now.

Mark:

Nicholas, when we come back from a break, I want to talk about something even before this conversation that I thought was the biggest restaurant school scam going, and I'm gonna talk about that as soon as we come back and in the

Francis:

radio business that's called the Cliffhanger. We'll see you in a minute,

Mark:

Nicholas, we were talking before the break and throughout most of the show about restaurant schools and how you really feel that they're kind of a sham at this point in the fact that they're, these students are spending so much money and not getting the appropriate education and that apprenticeships are probably a better way to go as long as they're apprenticing in the right types of places

Nicholas:

and as long as they wanna actually be a chef.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Nicholas:

I mean, that's, that's the thing. If you wanna be a chef, the apprenticeship is the way to go. If you wanna be a restaurant. Manager of a, you know, big chain restaurant on some highway somewhere, you should probably go to some kind of culinary school. But you know what should go hundred thousand? Frankly,

Mark:

those big chains have have their own programs managing, I doubt. I

Nicholas:

don't doubt that they do.

Mark:

What I talked about right before the break is what I, one of the biggest scams that I've always felt that restaurant schools have gotten away with, and I never understood how they get away with it. You take a school. That, and let's say they're charging$40,000, uh, or$20,000 a semester. Well, for most of one of your semesters you need to do an externship at one of, at one of our restaurants. Right. Okay. And, and you've had externs and we've had externs and uh, you know, it's basically one of these apprenticeships. Right. But for 18 weeks at a time for, for 18 weeks. And what you get to do while you're doing this apprenticeship in one of our restaurants is you get to pay the restaurant school. For your time that you're spending as an apprentice.

Francis:

Yeah. That I teach you.

Nicholas:

Well, you know what's funny? And they want the restaurateur to pay the student to learn from us.

Francis:

See, now that's, now that that's something that is different. When we first started in 92, mm-hmm. Uh, certain culinary schools used to send us externs, and the externs of course wouldn't be paid, but we would take them on because sometimes. About

Mark:

one in 10 times, that person would be good enough to, to continue to work in your restaurant at some point later. And you would

Francis:

offer them, and we would sometimes offer people a job after they graduated or sometimes even in the middle of an externship, we'd go up to someone and say, you know what? You took a free externship, but you're actually being productive, so we're gonna pay you. But nine times outta 10 there are drag on the organization and, and

Mark:

truly, nine times out of 10.

Francis:

They're making your, your trained guy less productive'cause he's teaching this moron how to do something. Sorry, that's a little, a little, little much.

Nicholas:

Well, the, the reason why a restaurateur. Um, we do it. I can tell you why we do it. It's because the hopes are, and the reason why I am talking out now about the culinary schools and why we wanna do apprenticeships is the hope is that if enough people will wake up and, and take a look and see the way it is, and if you can train enough people that the industry will become a better industry. They'll be more trained people in it, as opposed to more kids that come out who are so far in debt that they have no choice but to do things that they wouldn't have chosen. Oh.

Francis:

I think it's, it's absolutely great and we love to do it, but I, I remember when they changed it around and we, we were interviewing some students who came and they trailed and they asked us to do an externship. And we said, okay.'cause we hadn't done it for a couple of years. We had changed chefs and they said, great, pay me$10 an hour. And I said, pay you, pay you. You know, you're a pain in my butt. I'm not paying you. Why don't you pay me?

Nicholas:

You should take a look at what the list of places are that accept externs now.

Francis:

Well, sure. Um,

Nicholas:

it's all, it's all those big giant places, um, that, uh, because who would pay a student$10 an hour for 18 weeks to, you know, you know this, but

Mark:

now this, but this goes back to the problem that you were talking about earlier. You, you already have a hundred thousand dollars debt from your. School. Right. You can't, there's no possible way you can afford to work for free for 18 weeks.

Francis:

Right. So you don't learn anything and you can't learn anything.

Nicholas:

That's, this is, this is the problem. And I'm gonna tell you that out of a hundred, out of a hundred people, one of them that makes it through this and just does, does well for themselves. The other 99, I am telling you, they all see it. You know, people aren't stupid. They realize, they see it. They're like, what am I gonna do here? I'm a hundred thousand dollars in debt. The places that I really wanna work in, are gonna, you know, pay me. 18, 22, 20$3,000 a year to, to come in and work minimum wage because I don't know enough to work in it. Mm-hmm. You think you're gonna go to Danielle or Jean George or La Bernadin or a place like Restaurant Nicholas and get a job right outta school and get a good paying job. When you don't really have any skill, the job

Francis:

is like, okay, you can clean this finish. Okay. That's your job.

Mark:

Alright, so Nicholas, what are the redeeming qualities? What, give me a reason why somebody should go to to school. Culinary school. Culinary school.

Nicholas:

Um, I would, I would say the only thing I can think is the same reason why, um, someone should go to any college that I think that you probably develop social skills. You know, you, you, you know, you get away from home, you develop, you grow, you mature a little bit. That would be the one and only thing I can think that would be different.

Francis:

Well, and you can do that for a heck of a lot less than a hundred thousand dollars at a cooking school. You know, I, I agree with you and I, I, for a long time have thought. That it's disturbing what happens in culinary schools. It's very disturbing to me to see these young people come out. And we, we interviewed for a pastry position last year, mark. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the woman was, you know, she's just outta school. She had done a little bit experience. She knew how to make some things and she was gonna come in under our executive chef and we were gonna develop her into, into the position. And she wanted an obscene amount of money. She has

Nicholas:

to be paid it. Because of what her debts are.

Francis:

And so we, we couldn't, we couldn't hire, so what's happening is we have CIA graduates in our, our kitchen as well, but they're the top cooks and the sous chefs. Mm-hmm. And, and frankly, they've

Mark:

had, and usually they've had six or seven year seasoning in some other place.

Nicholas:

Right. But they're six and seven years out. I'm telling you, I looked at, at 1200 resumes, 1200 resumes this week. from Monster. Mm-hmm. And, and anyone who graduated from the, the, the top expense schools, they all had on their resumes. Every one of them were, uh, working in corporate dining situations, working in, big houses like, uh, you know, the, the big chain restaurants and all that kind of stuff. And I know it, you can see it. Mm-hmm. You can see why. They go to work. Sure you have to Disney World and all kinds of stuff like that. And I'm telling you, there's nothing and I want everyone to understand there is nothing wrong with gonna work in those places. I don't look down upon those in any way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I just simply say what I said before, there's no way you should have a degree from MIT so that you can go sell computers at Best Buy. Right. Don't be, dont be.

Mark:

Don't be forced into that because of the school you chose. When, when that may not be what you were looking

Francis:

for. And even if you're still thinking about culinary school, I think spending some time in a kitchen like Nicholas's or a kitchen like ours, you'll, be able to make a more informed decision as to whether you want to go or not. It's a big, big commitment. Hey Nicholas, we need to leave it there, but I wanna thank you for taking the time outta your schedule to be with us. My pleasure.

Mark:

Thanks Nicholas. We'll talk again soon.

Francis:

Alright. We'll be down to see you soon. we were talking with Nicholas Ferrari of Restaurant Nicholas, down in Middletown. Great restaurant. Love it. Love it. He's

Mark:

really down on restaurant schools. I'm, you know,

Francis:

I, you know who I was thinking of as the archetypal. Guy, there was another, there's another sort of a smarty pants guy who comes outta restaurant schools. And by the way, we've had a lot, I, we have a lot worked with a lot of people who, who are great chefs who've come out of culinary schools, but usually a long time ago. Mm-hmm. And again, it's that, you know, getting into the real world. A lot of guys we know who are great chefs who came outta culinary school. They came outta culinary school way in debt. Mm-hmm. And then they took a job for minimum wage Right. For three years and stayed in debt for three years and then slowly and got further in debt for three years. Mm-hmm. And, and worked their way up. And that's, and those guys all feel the pain of the, of, of the choices they made there. But I'm thinking of one guy in particular who came to work for us. he had gone to culinary school. He was very well read, and he had a great presence about him in the kitchen. Mm-hmm. His whites were spotless. That's the uniform. He was, were spotless. He was meticulously organized. His workspace was perfect. He couldn't do a thing. He talked, he interview, you know what I, I remember one of, one of the things he interviewed so well, he knew everything, couldn't do a thing.

Mark:

Just one of the, the little skills that a chef will do is as he's sauteing something, he'll take the boiling juices of whatever he's the butter or whatever he's. He's sauteing and he'll spoon them over the top and it's called quale and he'll spoon them over the top of, of whatever he's cooking in order to have them kind of melt into the top of what he's searing the bottom of. And, and this kid, as the kid you're talking of, and I'm sure it's the same kid, was, was doing that, except for one thing, he was spooning the juices, but kind of around the meat. Instead of on top of the meat, and it really wasn't doing anything at all except going from the top of the pan to the bottom of the pan and not touching the meat at all. Just to let you know,

Francis:

the line cooks who are listening just are laughing like crazy at that joke and nobody else knows what the heck you're talking about. Well, you know, what can I tell you? This is really a restaurant show. You just are the only joke ever, ever made on broadcast radio and Uline cooks out there. It is funny, isn't it? Everybody else. Sorry, I go to the video. Hope you've enjoyed the hour with the restaurant guys. I'm Francis Shot. And I'm Mark Pascal. We are the restaurant guys, central Jersey 1450. The time is 12 noon.

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Francis Schott

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Mark Pascal

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