Feature
Sacre bleu!
by Marion McLeod
The world’s most famous cooking school will soon be setting up shop in New Zealand.
Elsie B they call it, and it’s not long before I can say her name with the best of them. Any time now I’ll be chatting familiarly of L’Escoffier and Larousse. For Elsie B is LCB, which is short for Le Cordon Bleu, and any time now there will be a Cordon Bleu School of Cuisine in the Wairarapa – a residential school from which you can emerge after three years extremely well-fed and bearing a bachelor’s degree.
It will take you far, such a degree, for Le Cordon Bleu must surely be the most recognised, the most prestigious cookery school in the world. Julia Child trained there and their website boasts a string of illustrious alumni.
There are 26 international schools in places as diverse as Seoul and Ottawa; there are two in Australia and another opens in Bangkok this year.
And if all goes to plan, school No 27 will open next year in the Wairarapa, in partnership with the Masterton campus of the Universal College of Learning (UCOL).
It was the UCOL team who went after LCB. They investigated overseas, narrowed potential parties down to three, opted for Elsie B and spent a long time courting her. “It took a year to finalise negotiations,” says UCOL campus principal Jenny Jenkins. “There was much wooing and persuading.”
New Zealand’s location helped. “One of the great things about partnering with LCB,” adds Jenkins, “is that their European staff can come here and teach in their summer breaks.”
The existing LCB schools are all in cities; this will be their first rural establishment. As a UCOL brochure puts it, there will be “Fine food and fine wine in a sublime educational environment.” But exactly where in the Wairarapa the new school will be is yet to be decided: if anyone knows the whereabouts of the sublime site, they’re keeping mum. Some are placing their bets on Martinborough, others Masterton.
There are three mayors in the Wairarapa, though the total population is only 39,000 or so. Each mayor would be very happy to see the school of cuisine situated within their catchment. Indeed, if two Dominion Post stories are to be believed, the mayors are “tussling” over the school.
Tussling is a gentle-sounding word but its meaning is much more vigorous. I ventured into council offices in search of bared teeth but found only serenity and smiles. Bob Francis, Masterton District Mayor for 20 years, explains the background to the school: “The Wairarapa Community Polytechnic was a stand-alone institution but it struggled because of its size and ran an annual debt. In 2000/2001, it became part of UCOL Palmerston North and the government set aside a million dollars to create an iconic course to provide some substance to the Masterton UCOL.”
After much research, it was decided to establish a school of cuisine. Francis was involved from day one and still sits on the board. From the beginning he has shown his hand: he thinks the site should be in his borough.
“But there’s been a long, thorough and independent process of evaluation to identify a site. Wherever it goes, this is a Wairarapa project which will bring benefit to the whole region.”
Gary McPhee, Carterton’s Mayor, says the mayors are “at once both parochial and regionally united” on this.
As South Wairarapa Mayor Adrienne Staples wrote to the Wairarapa Times-Age: “I would unashamedly leap up and down wearing pink and orange polka-dot pyjamas, waving a flag if that would attract the cuisine school to the south. I’m sure Brothers Francis and McPhee would do the same thing for their areas (scary thought that it is).”
If anyone should know where the school will be built, it’s Jenkins – but no, she says she doesn’t. “There was one site earmarked but it fell through. We have to get official accreditation for the school before we can sign on a site.”
Jenkins, who hails from Scotland, trained in hotel management in Edinburgh. She and her husband came here to buy a ski lodge in 1987, the year the Japanese stopped coming. So she helped establish Gibbston Valley Winery before lecturing for eight years in food and beverage. When she did her Massey MBA, her thesis was on the feasibility of a hotel training school in Queenstown, comparing it with the Swiss model. That was theory, now it’s practice and Jenkins is trying to learn patience. (She was one of those who went overseas seeking a partner for UCOL.)
Listener food columnist Lois Daish has been a consultant on the project since its inception. “The LCB is providing both prestige and the curriculum,” she says, “though a lot of work is being done to make it specific to New Zealand, and specific to the Wairarapa.”
The school will provide more than a trade training. Graduates may wish to write, teach or research. “It will be a three-year degree course,” says Daish. “Students can do a degree course in gastronomy [culinary theory], for instance. And the LCB qualification will definitely help people who want to work overseas.”
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