Professor Kenneth Bourgoin explains the course progression of Valencia’s culinary program to incoming students. (CONNOR BARRY)

Located in downtown Orlando is one of the top culinary schools in Florida and a program recognized among the best in the world for learning chocolate making.

Walking through Valencia College’s seemingly never-ending kitchens in the Walt Disney World Center for Culinary Arts and Hospitality in downtown, it certainly feels like the place to be for those looking to prepare for a career in the culinary arts.

“It’s like a superstore, a one-stop shop,” said Steven Rajuk, program chair and director of culinary education at Valencia. “You can get all your education here: your culinary, your baking, your pastry, your apprenticeship … Once you get one of those degrees, we even offer advanced technical certificates in bread, cake artistry, and chocolate and confectionary arts.”

With six huge kitchens, three of which are specially dedicated to pastry, and a mixology center, each day students are spending their class time gaining real experience, developing their own creative dishes, and perfecting tried and true recipes.

These facilities are stocked with more than just your standard KitchenAid. Each kitchen has dozens of gas stoves, specialty fryers, large ovens, griddles, grills, smokers, kettles, and anything else a chef could want or need. With shelves full of every spice or herb under the sun and refrigerators full of fancy meats, students in the culinary arts programs have the opportunity to let their creativity run free once they’ve mastered the basics.

Professor Kenneth Bourgoin emphasized the range of things students in the culinary program must learn to become a great cook. Everything from cooking in quantity to sauce-making, dry-aging meats, and sausage-making, as well as plating and curating. But, above all else, Bourgoin said that a better knowledge of the food itself is the most important skill students gain in the culinary program. 

Part of that process, he said, involves tasting everything, even if you aren’t a fan of it. One such tasting exercise has students required to taste a raw oyster, holding it in their mouth for at least three seconds. Bourgoin emphasized that a chef can’t fully understand a food unless they really know what it tastes like and, more importantly, they can’t be afraid of how it might taste.

Students in the culinary program have access to a range of ingredients, herbs and spices. (CONNOR BARRY)

“There’s a plaque on the wall saying, ‘A good cook knows how to cook. A great cook knows what they are cooking,’” Bourgoin said. “So forgive me if I am ad nauseum talking about food all the time, because it is food that has got me here. It is food that has given those students the opportunities that they have had, that you will have once you’ve been through this.”

Bourgoin told incoming students during the open house that once they’ve progressed their way to the fourth floor, that’s when they get access to the fancy foods that will really expand their food knowledge. 

“Up here is the expensive stuff: tenderloin, venison tenderloin, bison striploin. We are doing foie gras. We are doing truffle. We are doing caviar,” Bourgoin said.

Along with the many opportunities inside the kitchen classrooms at Valencia, the “one-stop shop” also offers unique apprenticeship and career connection opportunities. Rajuk said that tons of Valencia students come from around the country and internationally just to be in Orlando. Being located here means students have the ability to get involved with the quickly growing local restaurant industry, as well as with food and hospitality titans like Disney.

“I’ve got about 100% job placement. Students get internships and it’s all with local players,” Rajuk said. 

Assistant Dean Dr. Craig Rapp echoed that sentiment, saying that coming to school here in Orlando affords graduates the ability to work for whomever they want.

“Everybody is here, all the major players, all the hotel companies, all the theme parks,” Rapp said. “They’re the people that work here too. You’ll find people working here that opened some of these places. You really are getting the best education because you’re getting it from people who are still out working or recently retired from these places.”

Valencia graduates have even gone on to open up some of the amazing local restaurants around town, offering other exciting local connections for students looking to get professional experience. 

“We are trendsetters. We don’t follow; we set the trend. We set the bar so high that nobody can compete,” Rajuk said.