At first this seemed odd. I was a writer who was being given fairly broad access to a large institution with an operating budget of $65 million, an institution that influenced the enormous food service industry, an institution that he cared a lot about. He had chosen not to meet me. And I had chosen not to meet him, at first because my questions would be fruitless before I knew the school, but also because I felt I was getting to know him better by not meeting him. Details, anecdotes, what people said about the man, how people reacted when they passed him in the hall, how people reacted to the mention of his name, my own glimpses of him—these small bursts of information, as they accrued, began to form a silhouette of the president of the Culinary Institute of America. That he was thoroughly corporate, for example, solidified in my mind from the beginning. When I first met with Senior Vice President Tim Ryan my first day at the Culinary, Mr. Metz called from, I believe, the West Coast.
What do You think about The Making Of A Chef (2011)?
