THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512060224
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: THUMBS UP
SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
AT THE AGE OF 19, Mykel Winterstine is already such an expert in the kitchen that even the woman who stood her on a kitchen stool and taught her how to crack eggs is impressed.
``Her father and I had dinner at the restaurant where she was doing her externship and we could hardly believe that she was back there in the kitchen producing the whole meal for 50 people,'' Bonnie Winterstine said of the daughter who is now entering her second year as a student at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
``I had to do it all myself,'' Mykel Winterstine said with a laugh, ``the kitchen was only big enough for one person.''
That was at the Fox Head Inn at Manakin Sabot in Virginia's Goochland County, a highly regarded dining establishment serving a full four-course meal to two settings each evening. She considers herself fortunate to have had the Fox Head experience.
She also considers herself fortunate to be a student at CIA, as her school is known in the field, and to be working in any kitchen. ``It's always been a male-dominated field,'' she said. ``Exclusively male'' might have been closer to the mark until very recently. Only in the past few years have women made their way into the great kitchens of the world, she said. Winterstine, who is one of a 25 percent female minority in the school, fully intends to join them.
``It's exhilarating,'' she said, ``getting all of the food ready and out on time, knowing that you put the lamb in when the salad goes out and all of that.''
Being a student at CIA is part of a dream Winterstine has had since childhood. ``While other kids were watching cartoons on Saturday, I was watching `Great Chefs of the World,' '' she said.
By the time she was in high school, she knew what she wanted to study in college. Just to make sure, however, she pounded the pavement until she found a local restaurant that would take on a female high school student to work beside the professional staff in the kitchen.
It was chef Joseph Zaremski at the Lynnhaven Fish House who finally hired her. ``He was wonderful. He let me do a little bit of everything,'' Winterstine said.
``I knew that after doing whatever they told her to do for minimum wage, she'd either hate cooking or she'd love it,'' Bonnie Winterstine said.
Love won, hands down, and Mykel, then a student at Salem High School, began looking at colleges while continuing to get as much experience as she could in the field.
In the spring 1994, she took part in a Careers Through Culinary Arts Program competition at Norfolk's Johnson & Wales University.
The contest was the subject of a feature story in the November 1994 issue of Southern Living. Winterstine, who was not identified, was the subject of the full page picture used to introduce the story.
Having her picture, but not her name, in the magazine was a minor disappointment. More important was the fact that she did well enough on her competition assignment of preparing chicken breasts with vegetables and chive sauce in a two-hour time frame to garner scholarship money with which to attend the school of her choice: CIA.
``Why don't you go to a real college?'' her surprised guidance counselor asked when she heard Winterstine's plans.
To Winterstine, CIA, which offers an associate's degree, was exactly the reality she wanted. She has not regretted her choice of the school, which boasts of having more than a third of the American Culinary Federation's certified master chefs on its faculty.
She hopes to be one of those master chefs some day. That will come after a few more months of classroom work toward her associate's degree, an additional 30-week course for which she'll receive a certificate in baking and many years of experience rolling pastry, making sauces, perfecting recipes and getting the lamb to the table exactly on time. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by CHARLIE MEADS
Mykel Winterstine, 19, a Salem High graduate, considers herself
fortunate to be a student at Culinary Institute of America. She is
one of a 25 percent female minority in the school.
by CNB