Staging plans

Staging (pronounced stahhj-ing) is an aspect of a culinary education, where essentially a chef agrees to let you work in his kitchen in exchange for the experience.  It's unpaid, and you might do some sexy tasks, or you might do some not so sexy.  I'm thinking most lean towards the unsexy side of things.  And that's fine, because it's for the experience.  I don't need to do the sexy.  (Emmanuel Lewis is sexy.)

Cooks and chefs at different skill levels, they all stage.  If I'm a great chef, and I'm friends on Twitter with a chef in a different city, I could arrange a stage in his kitchen the next time I'm in St. Louis, say.  So it's very cool and probably a collaborative element of cooking dating back to guilds and extended apprenticeships.

I'll pursue stages while I'm in school.  They'll lead up to my externship (paid or unpaid extended labor in a local kitchen), and give me great exposure to high quality local kitchens.  The two biggest questions have been Where and When.  Gotta be the right place, so that I'm aiming high.  Gotta be the right time, so my family doesn't go bananas with me always gone.

So what I'm thinking right now is to shoot for a stage once a month over April, May, June.  (More if possible, see 'When' above.)  I'd like to stage at Olivia on South Lamar, The Carillon, Chef Josh Watkin's restaurant on UT campus, and Four Seasons (to get the hotel vibe too).  There a a million places I'd like to stage, as there's a learning experience everywhere you go.  But these are the three I'm focusing on right now.

Then, with stages under my belt, I can then shift my focus in June, July over to my externship, which extends over August and September.