Students finding path to a career at local culinary center

Football sideline reporter admits she just made up some of her reports

By Ken Tingley

You have probably seen the modern looking building advertising the SUNY Adirondack Culinary Center in downtown Glens Falls.

It is across the street from The Mill apartments, next door to Glens Falls Hospital and just a stone’s throw from the roundabout.

You might have wondered about it and what goes on there.

The SUNY Adirondack Culinary Center is on Hudson Avenue in downtown Glens Falls.

You may have even noticed the advertising on the front door “Great futures start here” and considered stopping by the restaurant “Seasoned” where the students ply their craft a couple times a week for lunch and dinner.

It may be one of the best kept secrets in Glens Falls.

“Good morning chef,” teacher and fellow chef/teacher Rory Moran says as Matt Bolton opens the door for him.

It’s a sign of respect in the culinary community. Everyone on the team is “chef” and for the dozen or so students in class this morning, a moniker they aspire to obtain while working through the culinary arts program at SUNY Adirondack.

Matt Bolton is the former Friends Lake Inn executive chef who runs the SUNY Adirondack Culinary Arts program.

Matt Bolton is the leader and a former student.

He was one of just 10 students in the Adirondack Community College program in 2000 as he tried to figure out what to do with his life. He graduated in 2002 with an Associate of Applied Science degree while working at Friends Lake Inn in Chestertown.

But if you are thinking high brow and snooty, that is not Matt Bolton. He is a far cry from Julia Child.

Bolton is a Chestertown kid who graduated from North Warren, worked at Jimbo’s at the Point on Brant Lake as a dishwasher and prep cook while in high school, then got the job at Friends Lake Inn where he worked his way up the ladder to executive chef.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said about growing up in Chestertown. “I didn’t have the best of grades in high school.”

While at Friends Lake Inn in 2012, Bill Steele, who ran the culinary arts program at SUNY Adirondack, asked Bolton to teach a class at the college.

“I never expected to be a teacher. And believe me, all my teachers never expected me to be a teacher,” Bolton said with a smile.

Bolton eventually went back to school at SUNY Oswego and earned his teaching degree just as Steele was getting ready to retire. Bolton was giving the opportunity to take over.

SUNY Adirondack’s culinary arts building on Hudson Ave. in Glens Falls has two classrooms as well as a baker, working kitchen, bar and dining room..

It was perfect timing for Bolton.

Not only was he going to lead the program, but he gave input into the design of the new building downtown.

If you haven’t been there, you should check it out.

The Culinary Arts Center has been downtown for five years. The 8,100-foot facility was part of the first Downtown Revitalization Initiative awarded to Glens Falls by the state.

Twice a week, students at SUNY Adirondack prepares meals for the public at their restaurant “Seasoned.”

The facility has a big spacious dining room, a long bar, a state of the art kitchen that would make any chef in the North Country jealous, a student lounge, a baker and everything to you need to run a restaurant.

The goal was to make the Culinary Arts program at SUNY Adirondack, part of the revitalization of downtown Glens Falls, but a feeder program for local restaurants throughout the region.

This is a laboratory where students are taught how to sanitize work stations, mix drinks, butcher meat, bake and cook meals of all kinds while providing the hospitality that fine eateries expect from their staff.

“This is all hands-on training,” Bolton said.

Last week, the Chapman Museum held a fundraiser at the Culinary Institute where its students served wine and meals in the dining room and cooked and prepared a five-course feast in the kitchen.

As someone who was there, I can attest to its quality.

There was a big-screen television stationed in the dining room so the customers could see the students at work in the kitchen.

There are currently 72 students enrolled in the program and Bolton says there is still room to grow.

The courses are demanding with some classes lasting four to seven hours.

There are courses on sanitation, basic food preparation, baking techniques, casual dining room service, advanced baking techniques, food specification and control, culinary math applications, sauce theory, butchering, pastry and desert preparation and fine dining room service.

The training prepares students for a variety of jobs in the private sector whether they are interested in working in a five-diamond restaurant to opening their own sandwich shop.

Students can pursue a regular associate’s degree or culinary arts degree. There are certificate programs available as well. Bolton says the program has attracted not only young students, but those looking for a career change, retirees and those who want to be better cooks.

“We’ve had a couple of lawyers who wanted to change careers,” Bolton said.

The school is building a reputation regionally. The closest culinary program currently is at Schenectady Community College.

“All of the alumni of the program are working,” Bolton said. “Most start working someplace before they have even graduated. Our goal is to make them good workers and employees.”

Bolton admits to being demanding in the basics, not only in food preparation, but their attire and showing up on time.

The students are thrown into live events and Bolton admits it can be challenging.

“It can be dangerous,” Bolton laughs. “Throw in knives and fire into it and it’s a whole different ballgame. Sometimes I have to jump in and help out.”

Matt Bolton says the SUNY Adirondack kitchen is one of the best in the region.

Like most programs in community colleges, it is not unusual to see as much as 40 percent of the students drop out along the way, but the ones that stay are successful.

Bolton is one of two full-timers in the program with six to eight part-time adjunct professors. Often they are local restaurant professionals like Moran who owns Comfort Kitchen in Saratoga.

“The satisfaction is taking everything I learned and implementing it for good use,” Bolton said. “Lots of them did not care that much about about cooking at first, but it helped them find a pathway to a career. You plant the seed.”

The Culinary Institute is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays while school is in session for lunch and dinner. It has a limited 60-person seating. Reservations are recommended.

“It can be high pressure,” Bolton says about the student experience.

The night before the students were in the process of preparing 34 turkeys for the Hometown Thanksgiving event in Glens Falls this week.

Bolton has a long list of community events the students have participated in over the past year.

“The students are given projects to do during the semester and sometimes they don’t do it,” Bolton said. “You have to tell them that if they did that at a job, they would be fired.”

At the end of the training is a 120-hour internship for the students. Some are paid, some are not.

“The thing is that all chefs know each other,” Bolton said. “There is a lot of networking.”

And that leads to not only jobs for the students, but sometimes a career.

Maybe a sign of the times.

Sign of the times

I was startled by this sign at a local car dealership.

As a young man I remember struggling with broken cars, replacing mufflers, changing the oil myself and rotating the tires to save money. A big repair bill always put a strain on the budget.

For the past few decades I’ve been lucky enough to have dependable cars. Part of the reason was I was finally able to afford a new car every 5 to 10 years.

So when I saw the sign above, it was a startling reminder that many cannot afford a new car and when a big repair bill comes, they might have to borrow the money to stay on the road.

Not needed

I’ve never been a big fan of sideline reporters at football games.

They are not needed.

Their pregame and halftime interviews with coaches are inevitably a cliche-fest that tells me little and adds nothing to the entertainment of the game. I’ve said more than once, it is the biggest waste of money to pay anyone to do this job.

It got worse this week.

Charissa Thompson, a former sideline reporter, casually mentioned on a sports show called “Pardon My Take” that she sometimes made up what coaches told her.

What was worse, she didn’t seem to think it was any big deal.

She said: “I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again: I would make up some report sometimes because, A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime or it was too late and I was like, I didn’t want to screw up the report, so I was like, `I’m just gonna make this up.’”

She said she made the reports as basic as possible so coaches would not report her.

Tom Jones, who reports on media issues for the Poynter Institute, also reported that Thompson and another sideline reporter, Erin Andrews, both admitted making up reports while working the sideline.

If this is the standard for broadcast journalism in covering professional and college sports, then it might be time for it to pull the plug on sideline reporters.

SUNY numbers up

North Country Public Radio reported last week that SUNY numbers had ticked up slightly from 2022 to 2023.

While the total was up up 1.1 percent from a year ago, the overall downturn is still quite startling.

In 2013, there were 458,550 students in the SUNY system. This fall there were 367,542.

SUNY Adirondack reported the number of first-time students attending the school up 0.9 percent this year. SUNY Plattsburgh numbers were down 6.7 percent.

Since 2013, SUNY Adirondack’s numbers are up 2.3 percent.