3rd and Last Day in N.Y.: Not-Your-Average Lunch at the C.I.A. (no not "C.I.A.", The Culinary Institute of America

As you may all know, I Love Food. And what do people that share my same passion do? They follow it! Realizing that my time to venture out into the real world is almost here, I have researched my options. And everything lead to the same thing, The Culinary Institute of America. This place is like The Yale of food, seriously. It’s huge! It has 8 learning facilities with 5 student restaurants!!! I will admit, I am scared but like their brochure states, they definitely do “speak food” and that is my language.


What I like best about this school is that unlike the other programs that I have seen (Le Cordon Bleu, Kitchen Academy) that seem to treat this field like a trade as opposed to a career, not all students that attend here end up being chefs but other food-related vocations. And I like to cook, but I love to eat! And to top it off they were even talking about opening up a Food Writing Class pretty soon! That’s really what I want!


Being at the worlds “Premier Culinary Academy, you knew I HAD to have a meal there. We weren’t dressed properly to eat at their Fine Dining establishments and the other mid scale place had unfortunately just closed so we were forced to eat at their student lunch cafeteria, Apple Pie Café. Trust me, this was not a bad thing.


This seemed like your average lunchy type of café, having to order and then having your food delivered to you in your table. But this was not your average café. Along with your average chocolate cake and tarts on display, they also had things like Coronets, Praline Gateau’s and even a Bavarian Coconut and Passion Fruit pastry! All the desserts looked like works of art, these were the type of desserts you would pay like $9-$10 for, yet they were all under $3!!! Today’s special happened to be a Stuffed Pretzel with Drunken Goat Cheese, Butternut Squash and Sage along with their Fall Vegetable Soup. Just what I was craving and needed for this rainy, near freezing day, and of course the coconut-passionfruit pastry.


The food came almost instant. And luckily I had a camera. So as soon as I develop the pictures I’ll put them up. The stuffed pretzel was distinctive. The dough was laced with bits of sage so the flavor had aerated all along the bread. The nice chewy bread was moist unlike many other dry pretzel breads that I’ve had. There was a nice crunchy, cheesy crust almost all around it that gave it a nice contrast to the chewy bread. The slightly sweet squash cubes were perfectly cooked evenly with the bread. Nothing less of what I was expecting.


The Fall Vegetable Soup was alright. The vegetable stock was a little bland and the assortment of squashes were overcooked and falling apart. But then again it was probably being kept warm for several hours. My brothers turkey sandwich was also not your ordinary turkey sandwich but with Honey-Wheat Brioche Bread, avocado and Chipotle Mayonnaise on the side, not inside already. You could definitely tell this was made for your health-consciouss customer.


Finally it was time for the desserts. These looked almost too beautiful to eat. Mine looked like some sort of architectural building with an infrastructure of vanilla cake, 3 floors of white chocolate and a little passionfruit and coconut shred rooftop. This was simply flawless. The passionfruit gave that nice tangyness that fruit gives to any form of chocolate. My brother “Chocolate XS” also looked very beautiful. What it lacked for in size, it made up for in chocolate. The mousse was dense filled with layers and layers of intense chocolate flavors, this was truly chocolaty, too chocolaty for me but I could tell my brother was loving it.


Perfect, Nothing less than what I expected from The Culinary