Bachmann Born to the Culinary Classroom

If ever there was a culinary job that fit the person to a T, it might well be Chef Kirk T. Bachmann’s position as Vice President of Education for Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America. As the school’s chief ambassador and corporate liaison with Cordon Bleu International and its educational partner, Career Education Corp. in Chicago, Bachmann is passionate about the mystique of the French tradition—the Le Cordon Bleu tradition—which melds so well with his own traditional background. A fourth-generation chef, Bachmann spent his early years in the kitchen with his father, a master pastry chef who trained in Germany. As a teen, Bachmann trained at the Hotel Waldshanke, a resort in northern Germany that was owned and operated by his uncle, another classically-trained chef. Along the way, he also worked at the Mobil 5 Star Benson Hotel in Portland and later owned and operated his own restaurant in Colorado. Today, however, his focus is on the students who attend Le Cordon Bleu schools across North America. A proponent of the Old World culinary tradition of the classically-trained chef, Bachmann’s experience in European culinary arts comes to the forefront with the school’s foundational methods. Steeped in a 100-year tradition, Le Cordon Bleu provides students a comprehensive education that includes hands-on training and demonstrations. A teacher as well as a mentor, Bachmann and his team of chef-teachers keep the curriculum up-to-the-minute so that students are always ready to take their place in the culinary world. Each course builds upon the next, so by the time the student is on the last rotation, he or she is ready to be out in the real restaurant world. Le Cordon Bleu, first established in Paris in 1895, has 13 schools in its Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America network, offering programs in Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts, Le Cordon Bleu Patisserie & Baking and Le Cordon Bleu Hospitality & Restaurant Management. As VP of education, Bachmann is intent on leaving his mark by ensuring that the name Le Cordon Bleu remains synonymous with a top-quality culinary arts education. He recently spoke with Senior Staff Writer Mindy McBain about Le Cordon Bleu and its culinary traditions.

As VP of education for Le Cordon Bleu Schools North America, what exactly do you do? Do you travel all over the country to the different campuses?
I do. This relationship between Le Cordon Bleu Paris and Le Cordon Bleu North America started at the end of 1998, and it’s basically a licensing agreement. Our group of schools is the exclusive group of schools that has the rights to the Cordon Bleu trademark logo, brand name, curriculum, etc. No other school group in the world has this type of partnership.
Le Cordon Bleu has been around for over 100 years, and it’s rich with history and tradition and the mystique, the romance of the French. When you get involved with culinary arts, you start to develop an understanding that it’s so much more than a brand name. It’s really about the foundational techniques which are so much a part of what we do every single day.
I have many roles. I’m seen as the corporate chef for our company, but specifically, I am the person that manages the relationship and the partnership between the two organizations.

The relationship between the Career Education Corporation…
And Le Cordon Bleu Paris. I have a counterpart I work with from Paris. His name is Patrick Marten. He is the ambassador, if you will, of Le Cordon Bleu Paris. There are several responsibilities that come with that, many of which have to do with training not only our students, but also our instructors, who then become better instructors and deliver that message.
We say it all the time: Traditional techniques are what we really concentrate on. You don’t see the technique on menus in restaurants; you see the finished product. You see the halibut and the bass and the steak. The techniques that are involved in getting to that level—that’s our focus.
Another message we send is that if we don’t focus on these historical techniques, then the next generation of chefs and entrepreneurs will be lost forever.

You emphasize co-training and co-teaching.
Co-teaching is where international chefs come to our schools for two-week periods at a time. They don’t just stop in—they are actually there in the classroom, hands-on.
We have another concept called co-training, where we bring together our chef instructors several times during the year at a Cordon Bleu international property. The gatherings are for specific disciplines, either cuisine or pastry. The closest property for us is in Ottawa, Canada, and we bring the chefs up there for a weeklong workshop. In addition to being an arena for collaborative educational exchange, the workshop is very hands-on.
We ask our instructors to demonstrate in front of their colleagues so they can increase their demonstration skills. It’s one of the most difficult things they can possibly imagine—getting up in front of their own colleagues and doing a demonstration. It’s dynamic, and it allows our instructors to develop more attention to consistency. You bring all these instructors together and they all work on techniques, and they agree on what a technique should look like, taste like, feel like. Then they go back to their schools and share it with their teams.

Does the intensity of the educational program weed out students who may not belong in culinary school or just don’t have the passion for the profession?
Passion is a huge component, a necessary component, for anything, whether you are a culinary artist or a lumberjack. You have to have a passion for what you do. I think that we approach it more from the perspective that if a student has a desire and a passion, we will do everything we can to try to make that student successful. We offer mentoring; we offer additional remedial courses; we offer associate degrees.
It used to be okay to be a great cook and a great chef, and maybe entrepreneurs would turn their heads at the tempers and the knife-throwing and whatever else you might have read about, but today’s chef is a manager; today’s chef is an artist; today’s chef is a professional. We see them on television, they conduct themselves as professionals, so we train our students to be professionals, and with that comes a responsibility to the industry. They have to understand costing; they have to understand human relationships; they have to understand nutrition. Certain people need more assistance with that type of education. Our responsibility is to try to do the best we can to guide them. They won’t all become successful chefs, and they won’t all become successful restaurateurs, but we walk away feeling better about ourselves if we have given them every opportunity to be successful. I think it’s pretty natural that people tend to weed themselves out.

Once a student learns the fundamentals, can they explore most any type cuisine?
Yes, across the board. I think cooking schools across the United States and the world all have the same general philosophy that we try to build a foundation with our students from day one.
In the early stages of their education, students are educated on how to hold their knife, what tools look like, what equipment looks like, how it operates, how to be safe with equipment. Nutrition and sanitation are huge components of their early education, and so is professional development. We encourage students to think about resumé development and what they might want to do with their future.

Are you seeing a more diverse student body these days?
Yes, absolutely, there is a real mix. The high school market is a large component of the students that are interested in going to school with us, but we also have a large percentage of career-changers. I would say that 75 to 80 percent of our students are interested primarily in the culinary arts, but there is a good percentage of students who are interested in baking. And that’s growing all the time.
Our hospitality and restaurant management program is another unique component of this (Cordon Bleu) relationship. It’s somewhat of a “boutique” program. It’s the smallest segment of students, and we deliver it with a sort of European flair, where all the culinary and pastry students go to school each day in their chef jackets—their full uniform. We do the same thing with our hospitality students, which I’m not sure you see in any other schools across the United States, but you see a lot in Europe. Our students in our hospitality programs wear blazers and vests and the same color pants and shoes. They also wear chef jackets sometimes because a culinary component is part of HRM—our Hospitality/Restaurant Management program—so the whole package has a huge European influence to it.

Do the schools incorporate the different trends that are constantly coming at us, such as the latest foods from South America, Africa or the Middle East?
We do. But I go back to what our goal is. Early in the student’s education, that foundation is what’s so important.
I’ll use an example: Anyone could go to the store and buy the hottest, newest, trendiest cookbook. Thomas Keller is a great example. The French Laundry Cookbook is one of the sexiest cookbooks there is. And I love it, personally. What’s beautiful about it is that he really focuses on technique. Once a student starts working through the curriculum, they’re raising their hands all the time (in class) because they’re watching TV, they’re getting the magazines. They want to do all of this stuff—the fusion, the high food, the colorful plates and all that. We almost have to put the reins on them to ensure that they really understand the techniques that are involved with all of this great cuisine because if they don’t understand the foundations, none of it will make sense to them down the road. Braising is braising, and you should do it right; sautéing is sautéing, and you should do it right.
Once they get a little further in the curriculum, we have courses such as international cuisine and regional American cuisine. If you know the techniques, you can apply the different regional ingredients.

QUOTE:

"Once a student starts working through the curriculum, they’re raising their hands all the time, because they are watching TV, they’re getting the magazines. They want to do all of this stuff—the fusion, the high food, the colorful plates and all that. But we almost have to put the reins on them to ensure that they really understand the techniques that are involved with all of this great cuisine because if you don’t understand the foundations, none of it will make sense to them down the road."

You must have had extensive restaurant experience before you began teaching.
I guess my passion for all things culinary, if you will, is in many ways part of my genetic makeup. I am a fourth-generation chef. My parents came over from Germany in 1960. My father is a master pastry chef, and he owned and operated a bakery in downtown Chicago. My uncle is a cuisine chef in northern Germany, and I spent a lot of my childhood there with him.
When you grow up in that world, it just becomes part of who you are, and obviously, like anything else, it took years for me to appreciate that.

When you were younger, did you consider another career?
In 1976 we sold the bakery and bought a small hotel and restaurant in Colorado. I never felt like I would leave the industry completely, but I did have a tremendous interest in the hotel part of it, in the front of the house. The whole customer service aspect and how it related to the total experience of a guest intrigued me.
I will say that I was a pretty good athlete, and there was an opportunity for baseball. But I guess my bloodline kind of took over with that, and I’ve never regretted it.

You could have been a Chicago Cub?
Yeah, I could have been a Cub. I guess most anybody could be a Cub today (laughs). I feel very fortunate to have had that kind of experience, and my father felt that that was a route I should take, but he also felt that education was extremely important. When I finished high school I was sent to the University of Oregon, where I got my degree. Ironically enough, the plan was, at that time, to get my degree in America, and then I was heading to Switzerland or France or someplace where my dad could hook me up with a culinary experience there, whether it was a professional school or an externship or an apprenticeship like he did. Right after I graduated in ’85, they opened up a small culinary school in Portland—a bunch of old German-Austrian chefs opened it up and, ironically, today Le Cordon Bleu owns it, the Western Culinary Institute. It offers the Cordon Bleu program, so everything kind of comes full circle.
But that’s the school that I went to for my formal culinary training after college, and I had some great experiences up there. I worked for a private club called the University Club. I had that experience with the high-end cuisine, really lofty expectations, so that was nice. I also worked for the Hilton there in the front of the house, but I think my best job in Portland was at the historic Benson Hotel, which has been around for 100 years. They had a very continental restaurant that’s still there today called the London Grille, and it was kind of neat because the role that I had there was both front- and back-of-house. I was able to work with the executive chef who had been there for years and still is there today, a Swiss chef. I was also able to interact with the guests because we did so much tableside cooking with the traditional Steak Diane and Caesar salad and flambé. I worked there two years, and that was one of my most memorable experiences.
Like all chefs, I moved around a bit. I did the golf club thing where you have a thousand bosses and all of that. But a little later I spent a lot of time running the family restaurant in Colorado, called Josef’s, after my dad. At a point, it actually became my restaurant.

Is it still operating?
It is. We sold it about 12 years ago. It developed a pretty good reputation. We did a very classical European cuisine, but really focused on the products that were indigenous. We used Colorado potatoes instead of Idaho potatoes. We used Colorado lamb. Colorado doesn’t have a really long growing season, but what they do grow is pretty spectacular. They have some wonderful wines in Colorado, beautiful, beautiful corn in August, and things like that, and of course, the game in Colorado is tremendous.
A lot of what I did there in Colorado made me who I was as a chef. That whole alpine cuisine, I just loved it. I had the opportunity to teach (in the mid-’90s) and actually ended up going back up to Western Culinary Institute to teach for a few years until this opportunity at the corporate level came up in 2000.

So what lies ahead for you?
For myself in the next 10 years, I would really like to see some sort of legacy beginning (for Le Cordon Bleu), that we’ve established a certain standard for culinary education in the United States, maybe around the world. That Cordon Bleu becomes synonymous with excellence, even more so than it does today. Also, I want Le Cordon Bleu to become that go-to employer for the Marriotts, the Hyatts, the Hiltons and the Jean-Pierre’s down the street. Between then and now, we will support our students and faculty the best we can.

Has the impression of American cooking changed for the better?
I really think it has. In fact, I know it has. Many French, Italian and Swiss chefs have come to America and made America their home for several years now and are even American citizens. In fact, America won the World Pastry Cup a couple of years ago with a team of all French natives, but they were American citizens. So America is getting a better reputation in those circles.
From my perspective, from the American Culinary Federation’s perspective, there’s a pretty grand competition that takes place every four years called the Culinary Olympics, and America fares very, very well. This is where 30 to 40 countries from around the world come together, and it’s in Germany, and it’s a very, very, very intense competition. And America continues to set the bar.
I think the women chefs in America have become just extraordinary, and not just at pastry, but cuisine. They have really made a name for themselves. I think a lot of that has to do with the opportunities. Take a city like Las Vegas, where there are countless extravagant hotels that provide the opportunity for this type of high-level cuisine because Americans want it. So the arenas, the venues, for people to practice this kind of craftsmanship are tremendous.

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Story courtesy of Sunbelt Foodservice™ Magazine (August 2006), A Shelby Report™, http://www.shelbypublishing.com.