Escoffier School of Culinary Arts

I’m presently reading Michael Ruhlman’s most excellent «The Making of a Chef.» In that book, he talks about cooking – high-​end, serious cooking – issues from a kind of culinary ethic. This ethic extends beyond a penchant for service: you just don’t do certain things, like serve a burnt deep-​fried turnip, because you wouldn’t want to be served one. It’s the Golden Rule, only reduced and refined.
That’s why I cannot recommend Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. They take a $ 50 application fee and tell you that the fee will be refunded if you choose not to attend. Then, of course, it is not refunded. You just don’t do that. This, and several other things I experienced, led me to conclude that Escoffier is, at present, a school more interested in profit than they are in the furtherance of culinary excellence.
On a happier note, the chef/​students I shadowed were top shelf! And, of course, were they to return my application fee as promised, I’d need to rethink the school and its intents. Until then, however, this review will stand.

I recently attended a home cook class titled «dinner date». Having taken a cooking class from a small operation in Louisville I was very excited to be taking a class at the esteemed Escoffier. Though the price was quite steep in my opinion ($ 75 per person) my date and I decided to give it a go (he had seeked the date out himself, quite impressive first date if you ask me).
The menu included: classes caesar salad, pan roasted salmon filet with wild rice potato cakes & charred vinaigrette, grilled vegetable napoleons with herbed ricotta, and chocolate mousse with crème chantilly & fresh berries.
Upon arrival I was greeted by Chef Dion and the cooking was well underway (I unfortunately got caught up on CU Football traffic and was about ten minutes late — not my best moment, and my date couldn’t find the place he seemed to only find the administrative office which was a couple doors down in the same building).
There were aprons and recipe packets strategically placed around the worktable as well as water glasses and a pitcher of ice-​water. Everyone was working on individual projects so it was less instructional and more a group of people cooking together.
Our instructor was extremely lovely (Chef Dion) and the other couple in the class were great fun. I really appreciated Chef’s approachability, patience, and professionalism. She was filling in for another instructor and I feel she did an excellent job with the recipes she provided (she actually tweaked them a little here and there but I managed to find a pen so that I could revise the recipe handout).
Being a literal person I did not find the recipes provided terribly helpful or explanatory. For example I was in charge of checking on the breadcrumbs (as they were already in the oven when I arrived). After taking them out of the oven I asked the Chef how she prepared them (she indicated oil and salt/​pepper). The recipe in our packet simply states «Preheat oven to 325. Place the bread cubes on a sheet pan and place in oven until dried out». Since I wasn’t involved in making all of the items for this dinner I really hope the other recipes were written with more instruction.
As the class progressed we switched tasks as necessary to ensure all the food would be ready. What I really would have liked is if the class had a bit slower pace and the instructor walk us through each recipe.
I was excited to see that there was red wine and crudite to enjoy while we prepared the food. Our classmates cut up some vegetables, cheese, and the wine well that was a bit more complicated. 2 of us spent about 15 minutes searching for a wine opener which was never found. Eventually a classmate exited the class and either purchased or borrowed a wine opener from a neighboring business (he nor his wife drank wine themselves).
The food turned out fantastic and I was really excited about how the salmon turned out (I’m not a seafood person myself). I found it great fun to try new foods and also be able to possibly re-​create them at home (sans industrial kitchen aid of course).
I do want to note that Chef was awaiting 2 – 3 helpers the entire duration of the class. They never did show up. One thing I had joked about to my parents before taking this class was that I hoped for the price we paid ($ 75 each) we didn’t end up doing the dishes — well that is exactly what happened. Thankfully one of our classmates really enjoyed doing dishes and he was more than happy spending the last 30+ minutes doing dishes.
Overall I enjoyed the time I spent with my date, classmates, and Chef Dion. For the price I don’t anticipate returning or recommending as I honestly expected more from Escoffier (in particular accurate detailed recipes, and helpers to do the dishes and ensure everything needed was there and ready for us).

I’ve never attended classes here but filled out a form online so I could download a brochure to find out more about their evening and weekend classes. The form required me to fill in my phone number and they have been calling me non-​stop! I have asked 3 different people to take me off their call list — don’t ever give them your phone number unless you want lots of calls!

Do your research! Escoffier is a non-​traditional school so there are lots of students here from many walks of life. It’s not a degree program but rather a diploma program. This is great for career-​changers but also for people straight out of high school who want training for a culinary job. Their marketing materials and website are very impressive and that really drew me in compared to other culinary schools in our area.
I was enrolled as a pastry student in their April ’13 class but withdrew because of life circumstances (ie. going back to school as a single mom with a three-​month-​old was perhaps not the smartest decision I ever made.)
Here’s my takeaway:
1) There is a communication gap between recruiters/​office staff, teachers and consultants. I got different messages from each regarding my career path. While I wanted to follow the advice of my pastry chef instructor, I got conflicting advice from people teaching the career portion of the curriculum. For example, our instructor encouraged us to pursue a culinary experience outside of the country (within reason of course — our externships are not paid experiences so that is a factor) while career consultants focused heavily on restaurant-​experiences only and discouraged getting practical experience abroad.
2) Learn from my mistake. Before you sign on the dotted line, read your contact very carefully. There are serious financial implications for withdrawing. If you take federal loans, the school will pay a portion of your federal loan first before they repay you.
3) The cooking/​professional staff are gifted teachers. I can’t say enough positive things about Chef Dan, who ran my pastry class. He’s tough but fair, funny and entertaining. If I could rate him, he’d get five stars. However, the rest of the school really needs to tie up loose ends and get their act together.

Attended weekend class «Easy as Pie.» One of the best experience I’ve had with culinary classes. Chef Dan Widmann was an excellent instructor and is a credit to chef instructors everywhere. Assistants Lance and Dru were helpful and entertaining. Super friendly folks, casual learning, hands-​on, individualized instruction. For summer, we made pies of peach, cherry, strawberry rhubarb, apple. All from fresh fruit. Focus on making the pie crust as well as other helpful techniques. This is a great class for anyone, even if you don’t cook a lot or don’t like pie. Reasonably priced for what you get.

I am a current student at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. I recently moved up to Boulder, CO from Fremont, NE. I have had everything but a negative experience at this school. The curriculum is further organized and in a very precise manor. All of the staff and students have been extremely helpful and kind. I am only a month into the Culinary program and I am so eager to see whats a head in the next couple months. Even thinking about doing the Pastry Program afterwards. All the chefs that teach here are very well experienced chefs, although they all might not have the teaching background, they are great at giving their experience at what works in the industry and what doesn’t, so to me that is just as helpful. I would highly recommend this school to any of my friends or family.

I only have experience with the home cook classes, which are great fun. My husband and I have taken 3 so far between the two of us — knife skills, sauces, and dim sum.
The sauce class was amazing — over the course of two days, we learned 24 different sauces, and covered every type of sauce (dessert ones too!). We made a dish with each sauce, so we got some experience of what to pair them with. They gave us recipe packets and we went over the recipes and ingredient selection (take notes, there’s a lot of information that gets shared that’s not on the recipe), and then each person got to focus on one or two dishes, with interruptions to check out the important aspects of what other people were working on.
The knife skills class was more basic — while fun, we already knew a lot of the information in it. There were still a few tricks to learn, of course, but it seems that past learning the basics, knife skills is mostly about getting lots of practice.
The dim sum class was similar to the sauce class in the format — a bunch of recipes and each person got to pick which one they want to work on. For me, the main reason to take that class was to get some familiarity with ingredients that I haven’t been exposed to (OK, I’ve eaten them, but I haven’t cooked with them!). The techniques were introduced clearly and each of us got to practice putting together the different kinds of dumplings and potstickers and such. Since then, I’ve made the Cha Siu Bao, and it looks like what we learned in class stuck.
I like using the cooking classes to increase my comfort level with ingredients that I haven’t grown up using. Yes, I could print out a recipe and figure out a lot of it, but how and what to buy is a bit harder when I’m working with unfamiliar cuisine. The little tricks that I inevitably end up picking up from the classes are incredibly handy and increase my comfort level with cooking even more.

Undoubtedly, the realm of home cook classes is where Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts seems to succeed… and what is should stick to doing.
I took the Culinary Arts Program in 2012, when they decided to reform the entire curriculum. While this was presented to us as a unique opportunity, in reality, it was a hot mess. My culinary instructor had obviously and admittedly not taught a class in years, and was rusty in many of the techniques presented to us. Also, as the head of the entire program, he was in charge of several departments – things beyond the abilities of one person, and subsequently, simply left us to our own devices 80% of class time. He would leave for many hours on end and not be available to us when we needed to ask questions or have additional instruction. Basically, myself and my classmates taught each other and ourselves by experimentation. Not worth tuition.
In addition with the curriculum reform, we were the «guinea pig class», as they so aptly called us– the first class to experience the new format. This caused major confusion with the syllabus, which had apparently not been altered yet. Many times, we would prep for a class by reading the required chapters and reviewing material so we could be ready to cook that item in class the next day– only to find out the day of that we were doing something else ENTIRELY and had done the homework for no reason at all.
Many, many days, the ordering department had ordered the wrong ingredients for what we were supposed to learn, so we ended up practicing the same ol’ skills over and over again, when we should have been learning new techniques. Too many times to count, when we did happen to have the correct order, the food came in old, moldy or otherwise unusable. To echo what reviewer Whitney P. says, there is also never enough ingredient to have everyone practice a skill, so you have to be willing to elbow classmates out of your way to get your hands on an ingredient to learn what you each are paying THOUSANDS of dollars for, but somehow the school doesn’t have enough money to provide basic ingredients. You would be better off paying for your own ingredients at home and watching youtube videos on how to perform techniques.
The career advising was also a nightmare– they gave us the impression they would help us find an internship, a job, write a resume and practice interview skills. They did help us write resumes and practice interview skills… LONG after when we already had to turn resumes in and do our interviews in order to get our required internship. Yeah, thanks for the help! Solid. They waxed poetic about how well they knew all their students… but our career advisor hardly ever spoke to us, and repeatedly called me by the wrong name, somehow mangling LauraJane into Norma Jean every single time we spoke, including when she ducked into my interview with my future employers to say «Norma Jean is such a great student, one of our best! You’ll love her.» They turned to me and said, «Who the hell is Norma Jean?». Good question! I had told her time and time again that I really wanted my internship to be in fine dining in Boulder, so she promptly suggested a food court in Breckenridge. What?!
At the end of the program, they had so many students coming in that they forgot they still had older classes to keep teaching and taking care of! They basically overbooked the school and ran out of classrooms. As the oldest class, they sent us to our «new» kitchen– an old, run down kitchen in the basement of the Broker Inn, full of cockroaches. They also ran out of teachers, and hired a whole bunch more and tested every single one out on OUR class– basically insuring that we never had a teacher who knew what they were doing until the very end of the program– thank GOD for Chef Steven.
If you decide to apply (not advisable) know that the admissions department is known to straight up lie to prospective students. They told me that the farm to table portion of the program we would be staying at a lodge with all our meals provided and staying up there continuously for the last 3 weeks of the program. I specifically asked if we would ever have to commute to and from farms to make sure I would not be covering an extra expense and they assured me, no no, that would not be the case, don’t worry. Guess what? Farm to table comes around and we are all expected to drive back and forth to the farms every single day– no meals were provided, and it was a huge extra expense with gas money and food. I brought this up with the manager of the program who brushed off my concerns rudely and told me this had never been an issue before and he didn’t understand my complaints– which I see clearly is flat out untrue after reading Whitney P.‘s review.
Just know that they are full of bull honkey, they do not value you as a student, they just see you as a big, unassuming, gullible dollar sign. Save your money and go to a real school. Good luck!

I attended the bulk of the culinary arts program before dropping out. Let me first say, that they are far less farm-​to-​table focused than they would leave you to believe. At first, it seemed like we were working with locally sourced products, but by the end, most of our product came off of a Shamrock truck. I was also told that I would be living and working on a farm for 10 days in the externship, and this was not the case.
Secondly, while it is an accelerated program (which implies that you will not get the same hands on time that you would in a lengthier program), you are more likely to witness a technique than to get to perform it. Each day the students work in teams of 2 to create the day’s menu. Who gets to work with what ingredients is left at the discretion of the students. So, a person may not get the opportunity to work with many of the ingredients unless they are willing to vie for that dish on any given day. Basically, you have to be willing to argue with your classmates to get the opportunity to learn how to cook certain things, even though everyone pays equal tuition. I was not alone in having reached the last few weeks of lab and having not cooked a single piece of seafood (which comprises a large portion of the final exam). I feel as though I’d have been better of watching youtube videos, than paying tuition.
Not only do they not offer the opportunity to cook many things, but they seem overly frugal with what they offer their classes to cook. It seemed that many of the grains we worked with were simply too old to be properly cooked by the methods we were being taught. Or the school could «not afford» more of an ingredient for everyone to try cooking it.
Upon my metriculation, I thought the idea of one chef instructor for the whole program sounded great, until I realized what that really meant. It translated to instructors who were undoubtedly fine chefs in their own right, but who were rusty or relatively inexperienced in certain aspects of the program. Pastry week proved to be quite difficult for not only my chef instructor, but others as well. Certain chef demos took the instructor several tries to only do a sufficient job. I felt that this was hardly the education that I was looking for. I can stay home for free and try several times to only have something turn out alright.
In addition to the lackluster experience in the kitchen, the academic portion of the program was a joke. Students were not expected to truly understand and retain the material, but merely to be able to spit it back up on a quiz or exam. Also, there was virtually no food costing taught to my class. There was one assignment and a few lectures on the subject, but our chef instructor hardly understood the math himself. At several points, myself and another student had to take to the dry erase board to try and explain to the class how the math worked out.
My advice to a prospective student would be to save up your money and enroll in a real culinary program, or just go start working in the industry. Don’t let the name and certification fool you, the Auguste Escoffier School in Boulder is a waste of both time and money.

Awesome instructors, great progressive feel, love that the school is very focused on farm-​to-​table and utilizes primarily local fare — and the home-​cook classes are absolutely top-​notch!

I took a cheese-​making class and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a hands on experience making butter, lemon cheese, mozzarella and ricotta. The class was about 3 ½ hours and the assistant made the class frittatas as we cooked. Theresa was an excellent instructor. I will definitely be going back for more classes!