On a recent routine visit, a purveyor walked into Jesse Cool's Flea St. Cafe in Menlo Park, Calif., and told the restaurateur he was thinking of leaving a job on his family's organic farm to attend cooking school. Cool, a 33-year industry veteran, gently advised him first to see if he could live on a fraction of his wages for three years. Read more...

Is culinary school really necessary? I always thought if you knew how to cook, you knew how to cook. It turns out I was wrong. If you want to go into culinary arts as a career, culinary school is just as necessary for you as law school is for a lawyer. I found that even if you are a great cook, there are simply skills and qualifications you will get from culinary school that you need when it comes time to enter the professional culinary arts world. Read more...