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For many foodies, becoming a professional chef is a little bit like running away to join the circus. It seems impossible, the kind of bold, crazy move that is compelling simply because it is so unlikely. On the other hand, after hearing dinner guests repeatedly praise your cooking and loudly declaring that you should open a restaurant, it is easy to get lost in daydreams of culinary glory, imagining yourself joyfully preparing outstanding food, day after day, for a dining room full of excited, appreciative customers.To get a better feel for the realities of the cooking trade, I talked to David Herr, a former engineer who followed the ultimate foodie dream and became a professional chef. For him, the path to culinary contentment began with a job that was, increasingly, becoming unenjoyable. After 20 years in the structural engineering field, he found that "Work was drying up, I was burning out, and I wanted something new. Since cooking was an innate part of my life, I decided that that was what I wanted to do next." After a great deal of research, David determined that his best route would be to enter a chef training program at either the Culinary Institute of America or New York City's French Culinary Institute. After a great deal of consideration, he decided to go with The French Culinary Institute, as its six-month program was shorter and cost less than CIA's 2-year course of study.
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