FOOD FOR THOUGHT

摘要

Jean anthelme brillat-savarin is considered one of history's great gastronomes. The 18th century Frenchman, however, spent years as a lawyer before openly pursuing his epicurean calling. It's a trajectory scores of Americans have traveled in recent years as they aban-doned the corporate world and sought greater happiness at cooking academies. But if Brillat-Savarin were around today, he would probably skip the law and head straight to the kitchen. The fastest-growing population in the nation's cooking schools is young people who refuse to do time as lawyers, orthopedists or even traditional college students but instead proceed directly from high school into culinary academies. In 1997, only 22% of applicants to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y., were recent high school graduates. Today that number is 38%. At the California Culinary Academy (CCA) in San Francisco, nearly 20% of the 1,910 students in last year's incoming class matriculated straight from high school-a marked increase from 2000, when that number was less than 5%. At Johnson & Wales in Providence, R.I., the most common age of culinary students has hovered in recent years between 17 and 19, and Meredith Moore, school spokeswoman, boasts that these applicants are coming in with high SAT scores and extracurricular activities that could easily earn them admission to top colleges.