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Future chefs cook in a state-of-the-art building

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February 22, 2012|By Jane Dornbusch

Gabrielle Chenet of Ledgewood, N.J., in her NewWorld Wine and Spirits class… (GRETCHEN ERTL FOR THE BOSTON…)

PROVIDENCE - When Johnson & Wales University undertook to build a new culinary facility to replace its outmoded student kitchens and labs, the school’s president had one request. “He wanted a ‘wow’ building,’’ recalls Nicholas Koulbanis, of the architecture firm Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, of Cambridge.

And that is what Johnson & Wales got. The new 82,000-square-foot Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence is state-of-the-art, with, among other things, 30 teaching labs and classrooms, seven pastry and chocolate labs, three dining rooms, two bake shops, and a microbrewery lab. The levels are themed and color-coded, light floods in through huge windows, and graphics feature oversize words such as “culinary,’’ “create,’’ and “leaders’’ visible from outside the building. Level two, for instance, has as its theme “The Art of Cuisine and Wellness,’’ with marine blues and lime greens; one floor up, the theme is “International Baking and Pastry,’’ reflected in shades of gold and wheat. The themes even carry through to the tiles in the restrooms on each level.

The LEED-certified building was designed with energy efficiency and sustainability in mind, and all this in a structure that required a 12-foot elevation because it sits on a flood plain.

Student and faculty reviews of the building, which opened last fall, have been uniformly positive. “It’s a fantastic new facility,’’ says pastry instructor Susan Lagille, as she doles out tiny baby coconuts to students to use as cake decorations. Says sophomore Bethany Ross, who hopes to design wedding cakes one day, “It’s lots better than Friedman’’ - the dark, dated, and now-closed David Friedman Center that formerly housed kitchens and labs.

If instructors see any downside, it’s that the new building is almost too nice. “The one negative is that when they get bored, they tend to look out the windows,’’ says chef David Petrone, as he leads students through a class in identifying exotic produce. The budding chefs scribble notes as they peer at the array of rambutans, watermelon radishes, and purple potatoes. But Petrone’s not really complaining: “[The Cuisinart Center] is second to none; it’s state-of-the-art, not just as a teaching facility, but because it’s green. The recycling, the sustainability put us light years ahead.’’ Those skills and that focus, he says, are going to be necessary for these 21st-century chefs.