A history of The Culinary Institute of America: 1966-76

In the mid-to-late 1960s, a seismic shift occurred in restaurants in France and throughout Europe: Chefs began breaking away from the canonical recipes handed down to them by prior generations to begin honing their own styles and essay distinct signature dishes. Today, this aspect of professional cooking is assumed; at the time, it was revolutionary. The media dubbed the movement Nouvelle Cuisine (‘new food’).

As chefs were acknowledged as creators, rather than mere technicians, they attained renown usually reserved for writers, musicians, actors, and film directors. The de facto leader of the movement was the brilliant and media-savvy Paul Bocuse, who developed a worldwide network of colleagues and worked tirelessly to promote the profession and help shed its decidedly blue-collar aura. (Though Bocuse is widely credited as the first chef to emerge from the kitchen to mingle among guests in the dining room, that distinction more properly belongs to Fernand Point, chef-patron of Le Pyramide and a mentor to Bocuse and many of his contemporaries.)

Once again, The Culinary Institute of America held a mirror up to a changing culinary landscape, welcoming a new type of student. No longer solely interested in learning a marketable craft, this emergent breed viewed cooking as something more expressive, personal, and aspirational. Lawrence ‘Larry’ Forgione epitomised this mould-breaking archetype. An Italian-American who’d grown up spending time on his maternal and paternal grandparents’ farms in New York State, Forgione was originally bound for the priesthood, then discovered a love of cooking, which he pursued to the CIA.

Forgione recalls being distinct among his classmates in that he didn’t consider graduating a signifier of his education’s end; rather, he saw it as the beginning. He crossed the Atlantic to work at the Connaught Hotel in London, and then for Michel Guérard, one of the founding fathers of Nouvelle Cuisine, and also the standard bearer for one of its subsets, Cuisine Minceur (literally ‘slimming cuisine,’ associated with health spas). By the time Forgione returned to New York, and a chef position with the hybrid restaurant-nightclub Regine’s, he had amassed a level of training commensurate with a young European chef, a previously unthinkable accomplishment for a young American.

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Around this time, in 1975, the CIA figured prominently in a legendary Newsweek magazine cover story: “Food: The New Wave.” Paul Bocuse, outfitted in his kitchen whites, appeared on the cover, and the piece detailed the snowballing Nouvelle Cuisine movement as well as its ripple effect in the US – gourmet markets and cheese shops, kitchen-supply stores, hobbyist cooking classes, and an uptick in matriculation at vocational institutions such as the CIA. (When Rosenthal retired in 1974, the school was enrolling 1,300 students per year.)

The story emboldened countless young Americans who’d been pondering a career in the kitchen, but were hesitant due to the profession’s menial reputation. Current CIA President, Dr Tim Ryan, who matriculated that same year, recalls pointing any doubters to the article, signifying that a chef could become famous, maybe even end up on the cover of a major news magazine.

It seems quaint today; at the time, it was a sea change. Chefs, previously regarded as anonymous worker bees confined to the kitchen, were suddenly garnering international prestige and becoming celebrities in their own right. (Another type of chef was emerging on the West Coast of the US. In restaurants such as Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, launched in 1971, hobbyist cooks and food afficionados were flocking to professional kitchens, mostly without taking the step of attending a culinary school.)

It was also around this time that US labour laws were altered to categorise cooks not as ‘domestics,’ but as professionals, helping to remove the stigma of ‘unskilled labour.’ And, in 1976, with the fanfare surrounding the US’ bicentennial, a surging of national pride intersected with the burgeoning culinary scene for a renewed interest in American cuisine. The stage was set for the CIA to continue to evolve in ever more impactful and defining ways.

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