At 65 years old, the Culinary Institute of America is technically old enough to retire. For businesses looking to learn or entertain, to build teams or to build the perfect spaghetti, it remains as fresh (and importantly as tasty) as the first asparagus shoots of spring.
A recent conversation on what a business might find at the storied Hyde Park campus whisked through a feast of possibilities, all of them ”“ a la all things CIA since its founding ”“ top tier.
Importantly for the purpose of business hospitality, the CIA is more than a college for food. For groups looking to retire from the hubbub of the workaday world and in any number of different ways to immerse themselves in all things gourmet, the kitchen doors ”“ and five complete, professional restaurants ”“ are open.
The CIA began in New Haven, Conn., in 1946. It moved to Hyde Park in 1974. Subsequent campuses have opened in St. Helena, Calif., and in San Antonio, Texas. “But,” said Lorrie Hafner, the CIA”™s consulting services manager, “Hyde Park is the main college. We have 2,600 students at all times.” The CIA”™s mission, “is to provide the world”™s best culinary education.”
The kitchen-theater-gallery holds 18 for daylong team building. A room divider can be removed for larger business gatherings, doubling that number, although Hafner said classes up to and including 18 are the norm.
Demonstrations are shorter and can play out a number of ways:
“What we do for chef demo and tasting is use our Danny Kaye Theater located in our library. For instance, the chef can demo how to make fresh pasta and a few different sauces, our CIA student workers help the chef prep, help during the demo and serve the audience tastings of what is cooked. Our chefs can demo just about anything. Sometimes we make it interactive and ask the audience for volunteers to come down and help the chef.”
Such an event might segue into a wine tasting with the meal served to participants. “They tell us what they”™d like to do. It”™s geared to what the client wants.”
Urban spice and flavor dynamics constitute a pair of lecture themes. Lectures last 90 minutes to two hours.
A team-building effort typically lasts up to 7 1/2 hours, with the end product serving as the crowning achievement of the day.
Wine tastings are also a staple of the CIA. “We have many sommeliers on site,” Hafner said.
Businesses who use the CIA”™s facilities for their own ends range from small to nonprofit to major and, with Hafner declining to name them on the record, enjoy the perk of privacy.
“The best feedback we receive is that they come back again,” she said. “That’s how I know the experience has exceeded their expectations ”“ and it always does.”
There are five restaurants on the campus serving multiple cuisines, including St. Andrew’s Cafe, which is wedded to the locavore movement. The remaining restaurants are American Bounty, whose cage-free Hudson Valley foie gras offers a tipoff the 1982-founded restaurant rose from the early regional-food movement, Apple Pie Bakery Cafe, Caterina de”™Medici and Escoffier (with detailed menu information on their offerings at the CIA website.)
“They’re all different and they”™re all popular,” Hafner said.
In a world that is very savvy about food and wine ”“ exhibit A: food superstars, an unthinkable tag a generation ago, now fill a modest phone book ”“ the CIA also offers a “wow” factor that attracts clients from across state lines.
“I just took a group from a large corporation on a tour for two hours,” Hafner said. “They were floored. I have worked here 11 years and every single day I walk onto this campus I think: Oh, my God, this is so beautiful. And then I think how hungry I am.”
