Culinary Institute of Virginia Newport News

My husband got me a cooking class for my birthday and I was excited to go! I had never done a cooking class before! We drove out to the culinary institute and were excited to get started. The class we were doing was New England cuisine. We thought we would be cooking lobster, clam chowder and other seafood recipes. When the instructor started talking and handing out the packets of recipes, we were surprised with the recipes (beet salad, chowder, chicken, root veggies, johnny cakes). We had to pair up with people we did not know and then each person in the group had to choose a recipe to cook. I chose the clam chowder. It took me about 20 minutes to get all my supplies because they didn’t have everything out (food and cooking utensils). The instructor came around and said I was super behind… well thanks for making me feel the pressure! So I rushed to get everything in the pot. It looked like my husband and the others were rushing as well. I did NOT like this. It is supposed to be fun. We aren’t cooking students and we aren’t familiar with the kitchen. They kinda just threw us in the kitchen and said OK start cooking. We plated our food, along with the other groups, and ate our food. Overall it was fun, besides feeling rushed, but I did learn a lot.

As a current student at CIV, I’ve come to firmly appreciate my choice in pursuing a professional career in the Culinary arts. All of the Instructors are certified and have been Executive Chefs or opened or owned their own restaurants. They are all deeply passionate about food and it conveys through their teaching. My favorite instructor has left the school, and while I was greatly looking forward to having him as an instructor for his specific area of cooking, I’m completely confident in the knowledge I’ll learn from another instructor based on the standards set forth by the faculty. Courses are laid out in a comprehensive manner and are aimed to to prepare you to work in real kitchens. The school has a wide array of connections to some of the best local restaurants, and ones in other states, to help you get the off site training that you want most. The school gave me the opportunity to get in the place that i not only wanted to train at, but work in after graduation. And the certifications you get pay for themselves.
i will say that the fast pace of the school is hard for some to keep up with. A lot of information is packed into ten days over five weeks. But it does tend to help adapt to the quick pace of most kitchens. Some of the classes are more web based than others, but no matter what the class, all the information can be accessed online with power points and lecture notes. another drawback is that it’s affiliated with ECPI. Classes like English and Algebra are done through ECPI. The instructors are not a part of CIV and are therefor not held to the same standards. For legal reasons, i will not mention any instructors names, but at least one has consistently been reported and has the same students SHE FAILED TO TEACH put back into her class. But that’s ECPI, not CIV.
Overall, I firmly encourage anyone who is looking to get started on the path of becoming a Chef to Check out CIV and see if it’s for them. Definitely a great stepping stone.