Ferdinand Metz: president, Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan, 1995 by Pamela Parseghian

When Ferdinand Metz attended his first graduation as president of The Culinary Institute of America and saw a student receive her diploma clad in an old stained cook's uniform and cowboy hat, he knew he had many changes to make.

At the time students partied on the school's front lawn, and a treasurer had been indicted for skimming funds from the not-for-profit school.

Today, more than 14 years later, students wear polished work shoes, pressed uniforms and serious expressions as they sit on oak chairs in a new $7.5 million library that looks as if it belongs on the campus of an Ivy League college.

"It seems people respect the atmosphere," says Metz, who focuses on such symbolic details as dress code to help set professional standards.

But beyond the details there is depth: Many cite Metz as being one of the individuals most responsible for elevating the culinary profession in America over the last decade.

Since taking over the leadership of the "other" CIA, Metz has enhanced the school with dynamic additions, including three new public restaurants, a continuing education program that grew last year by 24 percent in enrollment, a West Coast campus in Napa Valley, Calif., and a baccalaureate degree program.

"The baccalaureate is probably the biggest and most important thing we have done since we initiated the AOS [associate of occupational studies] degree in 1972," Metz says. "We're becoming a real college now."

As a testimony to the school's quality, Paul Bocuse, France's most celebrated chef, sent his son to the school because "it is perhaps the best school in the world," he says.

"I don't think there is anybody who did more for young American chefs than Ferdinand Metz," states Raimund Hofmeister, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Culinary Institute in Burbank, Calif. "As a confidence builder, he gave them a sense of who they are, that they have a place in the world.

"Just look at what he did with the institute since he has been here," adds Hofmeister during a recent tour of new facilities at the college. "He and The Culinary Institute are miles ahead of everybody else. He is a visionary in his own right, and he has a very strong voice within the industry and a lot of people listen to it."

"When Ferdinand Metz talks, people listen," confirms chef Andrew Wilkinson of Restaurant Concepts in Brookline, Mass., who calls himself a Metz disciple.

"I grew up trying to understand classical cuisine by studying the works of dead chefs -- like Escoffier. Now students have Ferdinand," says Wilkinson, a 1983 CIA graduate who served on the 1984 and 1988 U.S. Culinary Olympic teams managed by Metz.

As with the CIA, Metz has left his imprint on the U.S. Culinary Team, dedicating more than 20 years to the team as a member, captain and manager. Before Metz, the team was filled with European-trained chefs, says Keith Keogh, the 1992 team manager who followed him as manager.

But by 1988, the year the Olympians won the most prestigious World Championship for Hot Food Competition in Frankfurt, Germany, the majority of the team was American trained, Keogh says.

"Ferdinand is a tremendous competitor in any situation that holds itself as competitive, and because of his nature he puts his all into achieving success," Keogh adds.

The never-complacent Metz also served as president and chairman of the American Culinary Federation, a 24,000-member association of professional chefs. During his tenure with the ACF, he was instrumental in establishing an Apprenticeship Program and developing the association's Master Chef Certification Program.

Currently, Metz is one of the few Master Chefs to also hold a master's degree in business administration, which he received in 1975 from the University of Pittsburgh while he was working as an experimental chef at Heinz, U.S.A.

His business training helped prepare him to lead the institute, which operates on a sizable annual budget of about $40 million. And his culinary experience, which runs the gamut from high-production hotel banquet kitchens to fine dining, crystallized his handson understanding of the foodservice industry.

Growing up in war-shattered Germany in the 1940s, Metz could not ever have envisioned himself as the president of the United States' most influential culinary school.

A difficult childhood makes his achievements all the more remarkable. His mother raised him and his brother alone, without knowing if she was a widow. His father had been taken prisoner of war in Siberia, and it wasn't until Metz was 7 years old that he even met him.

He remembers that when his father returned home from the Soviet Union, his mother wisely restrained herself from feeding her husband rich foods; other families had celebrated the return of their loved ones with feasts, and, tragically, some of those other former POWs died because they were not used to eating well following years of nearstarvation.

As a result of his experiences, his father never allowed anyone in his family to utter the words, "I'm hungry," because, he said, "You don't know what hunger means."