Show notes
Welcome to “What’s Burning”, a podcast of the Galilee Culinary Institute by Jewish National Fund USA. On the show, Host Mitchell Davis invites experts from across the food industry and around the world to help reimagine culinary education. The goal is to better prepare the next generation of culinarians, amateurs and professionals alike, to understand the richness and complexity of our food culture and to inspire them to strive for excellence in whatever they do.
For the last 30 years Davis has been observing trends in the food world from a variety of vantage points – whether as Chief Strategy Officer at the James Beard Foundation or as Academy Chair of the World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards. He’s served on advisory boards of culinary schools, hospitality programs, and food studies departments in the United States and abroad.
Throughout this time, Davis has witnessed firsthand how the food profession has evolved from a barely visible vocation onto the pages of celebrity magazines. He’s seen the gourmet center of gravity move from France to Japan to Peru to Korea, and back again. And he’s watched as the job of cooking has expanded to include elements of political advocacy, social justice, sustainability, and community leadership. There was no network dedicated to food television when he started out. No social media. No academic discipline dedicated to the study of food.
And yet amidst this rapidly changing culinary landscape, much of culinary education has remained the same.
Along with his colleagues at the Galilee Culinary Institute, or GCI for short, they are setting out to explore how culinary education should evolve and adapt to meet this changing food world.
Beyond Escoffier’s five French mother sauces, they want to know what fundamental skills students need to acquire in order to enable them to benefit from the vast and varied world of culinary creativity out there. They want to look at what students should learn to manage their careers and motivate their teams to succeed in an opportune but uncertain future.
GCI believes culinary education needs to emphasize the complete, complex food system, from farm to fork, from dock to dish, from laboratory to ladle, in order to inform and cultivate students’ passion for food.
As with most education, the goal isn’t to teach everything there is to know about food -- that would be impossible given our ever-changing global buffet. Instead, Davis and his colleagues believe it is important to instill a set of values that are key to developing a conscientious approach to the food profession and the curiosity that leads to a life of learning and growth.
As the late American food writer James Beard said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” And by speaking to folks from all aspects of the food industry and from around the world, “What’s Burning” hopes to both examine what we share and what makes us different.
This is a particularly poignant time to be looking at culinary education. The restaurant and hospitality industries have faced a serious reckoning in light of the pandemic that exposed challenges to their business model, infrastructure, supply chain and labor force. The stark evidence of climate change has exposed the consequences of the decisions we make about how and where we produce the food we eat. The social justice movement has exposed the complex and messy dynamics of power that have forced us to examine equity, race, cultural appropriation, and income disparity with different sensibilities. The kitchen, the dining room, the grocery store shelf, the plate, are all different nexuses of these cultural threads.
While it may seem that these topics fall outside the realm of culinary education, which has traditionally been more focused on classic cuisines, knife skills, food safety, and other techniques, that’s exactly the point. The time to examine what, how, and where we teach students about food is now.
“What’s Burning” is a production of GCI, the Galilee Culinary Institute’s Rosenfeld School of Culinary Arts, a new culinary education center scheduled to open by early 2023 at Kibbutz Gonen in Israel’s Upper Galilee. To learn more visit galileeculinaryinstitute.com
You can enjoy new episodes of “What’s Burning” every other Wednesday. You’re invited to listen by logging on to: galilleculinaryinstitute.com/whatsburning. Or, you can listen on all podcast platforms where you're also invited to subscribe, rate and review the program.
And feel free to reach out to the “What’s Burning” team by sending an email to: info@gcibyjnf.com.
Looking forward to having you join this journey of delicious discovery.
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