Day 5: I Mingle With Royalty

As I entered the doorway to the gymnasium of the CIA, I gasped in wonderment. I had been there before, seen what it looked like set up as a career fair, or set up simply as the basketball court, but I had never seen it look anything like this before. There were carpeted floors, there were grandstands set up, and there were cameras everywhere I looked. As I stepped further into the competition space I looked to my left, where i was greeted with an enormous table, with the names of 12 of the most famous chef's in the world sitting on it. there were 4 cooking booths, each of them equipped with anything you could ever need or want. There were State of the Art ovens, stove top ranges, even Sous Vide cookers right in front. There was nothing I could do but stand with my best friend, and try to take in all the glory of food that I was surrounded with. I turned around one more time, about to go sit down, when i was greeted by a well dressed lady with a cup of what I found out to be sparkling water. I found this out because when I placed the cup to my lips and started drinking, I was immediately introduced to a barrage of bubbles. This was surprising.

After my encounter with the unnecessarily bubbly water, my friend and I found a seat. We then spent the next 3 hours watching cooking demo after cooking demo. We were both mesmerized, not able to look away from the magic that appeared to be happening before our eyes. I saw techniques that i had never even heard of, witnessed food being prepared right before my eyes that I could never even dream of making at this stage in my training, and I saw the most experienced chef's in the world make this magic look like it was nothing.

The last seminar was a table discussion about the cooking world, the competition, and what it takes to succeed as a chef. 12 of the finest chefs in the world sat down in front of us, answering questions from the Dean of Students of the CIA, answering questions from the audience, and just generally talking about their experiences. The only thing that I could do during this entire hour and half was soak up every bit of knowledge that came out of their mouths. When the discussion was over, we got to goo up and meet with the chefs, talk with them for a little while. I am going to sound like an excited boy for all of about 2 seconds here, but I want to say this. I got to meet Chef Thomas Keller in person, and I got to shake his hand. I'm so excited!!!!!!!!! The best part about this, is that this was all only on the first day. The competition had not even begun. So, accordingly, I went home and collapsed on my bed to fall asleep immediately.

As I am going to do right now. You are going to have to wait to hear about the competition, just as I did. But don't worry, it will all be on here tomorrow! I hope you enjoyed reading about the first day as much as I had attending it. See you tomorrow.