Dean's Address

Welcome to Paragon Culinary School! The word “paragon” means the best of the best, and this is exactly what we have set out to accomplish at PCS. In my 22 years as a professional chef, sommelier, restaurant manager and owner; I attended four different schools, opened two, and taught at over a dozen, including receiving an Education Degree with honors (4.0) and three different state certifications. This experience showed me very clearly the pluses and minuses of school-based education. However, the completion of my personal training and fruition of my goals was only possible in the field, through years of intensive apprenticeship. This too taught me valuable lessons in how people, especially restaurant people, actually learn. What you will witness at Paragon is the perfection of all this experience. A truly effective restaurant training environment is our goal. So, what makes us so different?

1. Size. Yes, size does matter, but not in the way you might imagine. Large schools with thousands of students may be famous, but they suffer two major, almost catastrophic, drawbacks. First, they need huge campuses with large fields of grass and hundreds of thousands of square feet of marble and granite antediluvian buildings. It is impressive, yes, but unimportant and far too expensive. Imagine heating and cooling the Capitol Building. Just the size doubles your tuition. But cost is not the biggest concern with larger schools. Stadium-style seating and lack of intensive personal training, when combined with a structure designed around the “lowest common denominator”, really does a disservice to the students, who will pay three times as much and not end up properly prepared for the field. We are small (less than 300 students), on purpose. It keeps our tuition low, our class size small, our training level intense and effective, and our staff very specifically the best they can be.

2. Chefs, not instructors. It is hard to say this without hurting someone’s feelings, but there is a BIG difference between a culinary instructor and a world-class chef who has run the finest kitchens in the world. It would be the same as learning to drive from a driving school instructor as opposed to Mario Andretti; or taking an art class from the local part time night class teachers rather than apprenticing under Monet himself. Simply put, our staff of award-winning champion chefs has and is shaping the culinary world on the four and five star levels as leaders and masters. There are teachers and even deans at other schools who would be considered several whole steps below them in the classical brigade.

3. Hands on. All students will learn and work “hands on” in all sections of the restaurant, and not just a couple times for exams…continuously. They will be truly prepared to work in an actual real world environment.

4. All-Encompassing. Far too often a trainee, or even an experienced employee, only knows or understands one particular area of the restaurant operation. This not only makes them less valuable as an employee, but it increases the chance of conflict with other departments. Our students learn EVERYTHING, from bookkeeping and ordering to cooking and serving. We are not training only chefs, but general managers and future restaurateurs.

So, three times the training for one-third the price. You can’t beat that. Instead of the national average of 32-36 thousand a year, you only pay 10. That’s right, the entire three-year program is LESS THAN the national average for a single year at one of those big inefficient schools. AND, you actually get into the kitchen and learn to cook. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to see you soon.