Intermediate Cuisine review - my experience of the course....

Today, it's Monday, 4th January 2010. It's been ages since I came back from Paris. In the meantime we've seen Christmas, the NewYear, we've been to the family in the UK, we've had a few visitors here and we were just enjoying the city of Amsterdam. Time flies by! In the next few days I'll try to write a bit about my LCB experiences.

After finishing my 'Basic Cuisine' adventures last year, I wrote a feedback piece about the course. This turned out to be well-received and appreciated by both fellow students and Cordon Bleu itself. So I have decided to do a similar review again this time about the Intermediate Cuisine Intensive.

The questions that I am most frequently asked are about the differences with Basic Cuisine, what I've learned this time, and if the school (or the people) has/have changed? Last year I already wrote a bit on general issues, so I shall try to not repeat myself too much.

So, without further ado, here is some feedback in no particular order:

Well, the school has changed indeed! For the better I must add. To me, looking at it from the customer's point of view, it looks more professional. You immediately notice the difference when you enter the building - a different set-up at the reception area, different lay-out of the shop, and there is always a nice welcome from the people at the reception. They are a lot 'quicker' and better organized when it comes to purchasing equipment too! The staff all have got new computers. LCB has also changed the computers in the students computer room. Very nice indeed!

My enrollment for this course went very smooth. I just filled in a PDF-form, copied and scanned it at home and returned it to LCB. All by Email. (Oh yeah, and I paid of course!). That was the easy bit.

At the beginning of the course, it turned out that they forgot (?) to ask me for 2 passport photo's, my 'in case of emergency' details, my contact address, telephone numbers etc etc. But hey, who cares, I was booked for intermediate cuisine class !

Some things in administration are still 'very well organised' - not....! - as I already wrote on my blog before, I received a long Email with the question if I was still interested in starting the LCB cuisine course.....(click on the link)
The general discussions people have about the administration office is that they are mainly interested in booking a course; read: your money! At least, that's the students opinion. The admin people are all very nice and always very helpful, but... when the money is in, they tend NOT to respond to Emails/questions that quickly any more or they don't answer at all. I am still waiting for answers to some questions I asked last November in an Email..... and I'm not the only one!
Of course, many many things do go very well, but unfortunately the negative things are often the ones that stick by most people.

The class schedule.
As many others also think, it would be very nice to receive our class schedule well in advance. This would be great, because if we (the family or visitors) can book train journeys or flights to/from Paris earlier, we can save a lot of money! And we can plan our (free) week-ends and evenings a lot easier. It can't be that difficult to send it out by Email a bit earlier to the students. Why not?

Intensive course pace or regular pace?
Doing this intensive course was the only option for me. I didn't even think about doing the regular course of 11 weeks. This was mainly because of time limitations. I'm about to experience the 11 weeks Superior Cuisine soon, we'll see if I like that better. I'll let you know.

A very positive point is that the chefs have access to more (new) equipment now. We used brand new Teflon pans, different sizes of moulds, different plates. Things we didn't have last year. Very good indeed. However, regarding the equipment, we see more and more old pans in the kitchens in which the vegetables/meat tend to  catch on and burn very quickly. Once, one of the chefs threw one of those pans in the bin during a demonstration .....maybe time for some new pans as well?

Good ingredients.
I thought all the ingredients we worked with were very good. Very fresh and good quality of meat and fish. Big portions, sometimes even too big. Absolutely no complaints! (Remember my experience with The Olympic Duck during the Basic Cuisine practical exam last year?)

A big difference between Basic Cuisine and Intermediate Cuisine is the learning curve. Last year, everything was new to me and we had a huge learning curve. I was very excited about everything. However, during this Intermediate session I thought I didn't learn that much new stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a great chef and I don't pretend to be one, but I thought quite often our chef explained things we'd already done (a few times) before in Basic Cuisine. Sometimes this was because people, as an example, had never deboned a fish themselves or killed live crabs; sometimes people didn't do the Basic Cuisine course - they did something else, like another cookery school or not a 'real LCB basic course' and they were admitted too easily in Intermediate Cuisine. Nothing personal, it's just an observation. And sometimes someone just didn't understand a recipe at all...

Recipes.
The recipes we 'did' in intermediate were not very exciting - actually, we thought that in general they were very old fashioned and sometimes even boring and useless without any 'learning point'! I do understand it's classic French regional cuisine, but a more modern touch to the the recipes would be highly appreciated. Chef Caals was trying to make some adjustments every now and then in a demo, but we understood this wasn't that much appreciated by some of the other chefs. That's too bad - why not give it a try to update the program to a bit more modern standard? A pizza from the Alsace? Come on, you can do better than that! We even called some lessons an 'extended basic cuisine recipe'. That not too good for advertising!

What have I learnt from these recipes? Well, I can debone a whole chicken now and leave it whole in one piece (I don't think I'll ever do that again in real life...), I can chop-up a rabbit and a guinea fowl, I can debone a trout by taking its backbone out from the top side. Things like that. But I've learnt probably more than I think I did...
What I've missed in this course is more plating skills. I'd love to learn a bit more about that! Maybe LCB can put a bit more of that in the next Intermediate sessions.

Theft

Here we go again, sorry. Yes, it is still very much present. From little things that just vanish during a practical lesson; from a scraper - I know who took mine and I'm not going to ask it back from an ex-cagefighter, to plastic bowls, magnets, scales, and even a complete knife set. Sometimes it returns, sometimes it doesn't.

Someone in Basic Cuisine lost a complete knife set during the course and we had one (nearly succesful) attempt to steal one. The person who tried (?) this is still at the school and starting the next level soon (January 2010). Unfortunately, LCB wouldn't take any notice or action of what happened; So beware! Even people with good jobs steal stuff and in my opinion: once a thief, always a thief !

A big compliment to the dishwasher- and cleaning people! During the practicals they did a great job. Thank you!

Chefs

I would like to give some feedback on the chefs. There are quite a few chefs in 'cuisine' and they are all very different. We had lessons (both in demos and in practicals) from Mark, Patrick1, Franck, Patrick2, Phillippe, Xavier, Bruno and Frederic. All very nice and very skilled people. They're all great chefs, but at Le Cordon Bleu they have to combine that with teaching (skills). In that case, you are not a chef any more, but you are a teacher! Being a great chef doesn't automatically make you a good teacher though.

There were just a few chefs who were also great teachers!

I would love to get an honest (direct) answer about the plate of food I produce every day. I do understand it's also a cultural issue NOT to give a too direct feedback, but personally I think everybody improves big time with an honest answer from chef when you ask him about the plate of food you produce. ' C'est bon ' isn't good enough. Maybe that's enough for most people (in Basic Cuisine), but I think we deserve a bit more now. The only two chefs who always gave great feedback were Phillippe and Xavier. Thank you for that!
Enough said.

Timing
In Intermediate we learn about timing and plating up our dish warm every day. The exam is even more strict: Plate on time, produce a warm dish, make it look good (hopefully it's tasty enough) or you loose points!
To me, this should also go for the chefs too.... In general, the chefs use the 2.5 hours that they have available for a demonstration class to the max - and they won't stop early, even if they can, but, demo's of 3 hours or once longer (evening class - we left at 21.45 hrs after tasting) is just not done. Maybe it was 3 hours in the old days, but quite often students do have another class directly after a demo. So chef-teachers, could you please be aware of that...?! It just happens too often.

The written exam
Well, what can I say - personally I don't like the idea when you have to reproduce 7 recipes by heart. Or learn the meaning of a few French words. But, to be honest, I don't know how to change this set up.
What is 'interesting', is that certain people who don't speak any English or French at all can still score a 100% on part of their written exam. Their iPhones or photo cameras with all the answers worked overtime... I know this last bit is a bit of my own problem and I have to deal with that myself... but I just don't like it.

To my surprise, and many of my classmates, there are still people doing this advanced level who can't even cut an onion or a garlic correctly, or de-seed and dice a tomato the right way. Come on, how is that possible? All the chefs know this and they see it happening every day, but they are not doing anything about it. They just shake their head and look in disgust when they see it. It's easy to solve: grade them very low and make them fail this level! But these guys even graduate(d), and that's an insult to the students who take this course seriously.
The same goes for wearing dirty clothes in class. We had two chaps in intermediate class who wore their uniform for at least three weeks without even washing it - it was so filthy, you just wouldn't stand next to them! They stank! They don't deserve to be in the kitchen dressed like that - get them out please and make them change their uniform and tea towel more often.
On top of that, when there's someone in class that has such a big negative agressive influence on the whole atmosphere, and the chefs know it, please do something about it. Personally, I think this is also part of the task of the teachers. So, in general, a stricter approach of the chefs regarding all these issues would be highly appreciated! By all of us, I'm sure.

It sounds a bit harsh, but I think that when you've paid for the 'cuisine diplome' or the 'grand diplome', you sort of always graduate. Actually, many of my classmates think alike! LCB, this approach might backfire in the end - when a student graduates and is actually not worth it (sorry to say), and he/she advertises his/her background being LCB trained, it eventually comes back to YOU! Le Cordon Bleu has a great reputation in the world and you don't want that destroyed by people who 'pretend' they finished the cuisine program succesfully. Not because LCB just 'let them go', just to get rid of them. (They've paid and they'll never return...)  Please think about it.

The men's locker room is going to be expanded !!! That's great news. Hopefully they have finished this over the (Xmas) holidays and we get a bit more space.

Another thing I have noticed, is that everybody at LCB (the chefs, administration) speak better English. Great! I heard that they follow English classes at the school... keep it up! We have had great discussions in English with some of the chefs. Super!

WIFI.
There is wireless internet available in the building, but to access it you have to pay for it! Come on, we pay a lot of euros for this course, could you please make WIFI available free of charge?!  Just secure it the right way and have the password available at the reception.

The big question: Would I do it again? The answer is : yes and no.
Yes, but only because you need it when you want to do the next level, superior cuisine. If you finish LCB after this (Intermediate) you'd be a bit disappointed about the cuisine course I think.
If you're thinking of not doing the whole bit, I think it's better to quit after Basic Cuisine (great course!), or do the full stretch 'Cuisine Diplome'; but don't quit after Intermediate.

Let it be clear: I have enjoyed my stay in Paris very very much. Also the LCB experience was great. I was asked (also by LCB) to write honestly about my Cordon Bleu experience and give feedback, and maybe to some of you this review isn't that positive. Let's say it's a critical review. Honestly, I have enjoyed LCB! The school, the chefs, the people and my fellow students - thank you for a good time!

Well, enough for now. Please let me know if I've got something totally wrong. If anyone has got something to say or ask about my review, then please don't hesitate to contact me. No problem. Just let me know and send me an Email.

See you all again at Superior Cuisine at the end of March! Yes, I have already booked, and I'm really looking forward to it. Please check out the new blog already and sign-up to stay tuned.
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Another good review on the LCB experience is the blog of Mark McDowell. He made this during his last intensive in Nov/Dec, and wrote a very honest piece on his Basic Cuisine 2009 adventures. Check it out HERE !