One of Jersey City’s best-kept secrets has been around for a quarter century and is now getting the attention it deserves. Two factors have conspired to put the Hudson County Community College (HCCC) Culinary Arts Institute (CAI) on the map.
One is its brand-new facility; the other is the explosion of cable TV cooking shows. “Our wonderful new facility at Newkirk and Sip, in the urban heart of Jersey City, rivals anything at Johnson and Wales or CIA (Culinary Institute of America),” says Eric Friedman, HCCC dean of education, citing two of the most prestigious culinary schools in the country.
Friedman says the TV cooking shows “kicked off tremendous interest in cooking and have given people confidence to be able to do things in the kitchen. Fifteen years ago they wouldn’t have thought about baby lettuce or shitake mushrooms.”
Some 400 students cooked their way through CAI’s two-year program last year, 10 percent more than the year before. They use ultramodern equipment in both an “open kitchen environment and compact restaurant environment,” Friedman says, and they can go beyond the kitchen to major in travel and tourism, entrepreneurship, or hotel and restaurant, spa, casino, or B&B management.
Executive Director Paul Dillon is into his 24th year with CAI. “We’re getting high school students who know at an early age what they want to do,” he says. “They watch TV and they want to be the next Bobby Flay or Mario Batali, but it takes a long time to get there.”
Dillon should know. His Emmy Award-winning show Let’s Cook ran for years on cable and was one of the first successful cooking shows. “But some of the kids coming to our school have limited exposure, and we really open the spectrum for them,” he says. “Cooking is an art form. There are few things where you use all your senses, and you get immediate gratification from what you’re eating. If you’re not scholastically inclined, it’s a great way to develop skills. Students eat their tuition.”
But you don’t have to be a HCCC undergrad to learn how to cook. Community education courses offer a soup-to-nuts education. Want to learn the fundamentals of sorbet, ice cream, and gelato? How about cake or cookie decorating; the art of plated desserts; jam, jellies, and marmalades; advanced stock, soup, and sauce making; vegan cuisine; pasta and noodle cookery; slow cooking; appetizers and first courses around the Mediterranean; advanced brunch and breakfast cookery; or fish and seafood cookery?
If you’re wondering whether you can eat any of the delectable dishes created by culinary arts students, the answer is-not yet. “It’s not open to the public,” says Friedman. “Eventually we’ll have a subscription dining program, and future plans call for public dining. Stay tuned.”-KATE ROUNDS
For the credit program, call (201) 360-4640.
For the community education program, call (201) 360-4242.
BOX Meet and Eat
In the same building as CAI is the Culinary Conference Center at Hudson County Community College. The center, managed by FLIK Conference Centers, handles meetings and banquets for groups of about 200, with 12,000 square feet of conference space and full catering service. Call (201) 360-5300 or visit www.culinaryconferencecenter.com.-KR
PHOTO BY DARCY HUTZENLAUB
PHOTOS BY ROY GROETHING