PEEKS [Persona] Bountiful Source of Pagan Delights The culinary center of Monterey is a showpiece of excellence in food preparation and presentation. Mary is on a passionate mission to create great food and to teach others how to do so.

Mary Pagan

The Culinary Center of Monterey is a showplace of food preparation excellence and I am on an exciting and passionate mission to create great food and to teach others how to do so.

On August 2nd last year, Rupert Murdoch hosted an "Imagining the Future" Conference at Spanish Bay. I had the task of serving 500 of his guests at the Monterey Jet Center, including such notables as Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres, Nicole Kidman, Bono, and a who's-who list of political and Hollywood celebrities.

I was faced with the challenge of creating the menu and recipes, preparing the food, and coordinating my staff to serve this large and distinguished group. Sharing my love of the culinary arts is what I've spent my entire life preparing for. Food is what I do!

In the Beginning

I can remember making canned soups when I was six. I would heat them up in my Easy Bake Oven. I made my first original recipe - for Butterscotch Cake - when I was in the second grade. The recipe called for two cups of baking powder and specified baking the cake at six degrees for four hours. I gave the recipe to my Mom for Mother's Day, and from time to time would ask her "When are you going to make my cake"?

The kitchen was my happy place, and my cooking skills continued to develop as I explored my own ideas and "techniques." My little brother was born on Christmas Day when I was 10 years old. With my Mother in the hospital, I cooked our Christmas Turkey Dinner with all the trimmings. (Dad handled getting it in and out of the oven). From that time on I was hooked! This was my passion!

At age 28, it dawned on me that I didn't want to wake up at age 50 with the sad realization that I hadn't done what I wanted to do with my life. I quit my corporate job and enrolled at The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and graduated at the top of my class.

It was my great fortune to catch the eye of Master Chef Herve LeBiavant who could see my love of and passion for cooking. He has been my friend and mentor ever since, encouraging me to follow my dreams.

After a dozen years of working as a private chef, and in restaurants for Sodexho Marriott and Wente Vineyards, I decided to become my own boss and opened The Culinary Center of Monterey. The word "Center" accurately denotes what we do since everything is centered on food, the knowledge, creation, preparation and service, with culinary education being our forte.

Teaching and Working for Culinary Excellence

We have a number of levels of education in the culinary arts, including our 12-month State Accredited Post-secondary Vocational program. I started this program because hospitality is a major industry here, and local training of qualified personnel was not available. We are now providing that opportunity to both local residents and people coming here from other states to follow their dreams.

We offer one-day hands-on courses for the general public with over 100 classes to choose from, children's classes, and custom training classes for groups such as Driscoll Berries who bring in 40 or 50 customers on an annual basis for training with their own products. I've also done work with marketing firms such as Uncle Ben's Rice, educating their personnel about their product, how to prepare it, and how to sell it with recipes and cooking tips.

A big part of our business consists of providing custom culinary training for agencies that serve food such as hospitals, hotels, and retirement communities. We have had classes to update the skills of the banquet staffs for an entire cluster of Embassy Suites Restaurants, and have provided a two-year program for American Baptist Homes for their 32 retirement communities. In this particular program, their line cooks and food service directors would come in once a month for six months, continuing until all of their personnel had been cycled through the program updating their culinary skills as well as their training in special dietary requirements.

Recently, I have taken on a great deal of consulting. My largest project is a complete revision of the food service in the San Jose School District. Among other things, I am revising their menus and recipes for preparation in the district's new central kitchen that will serve 27 elementary schools, eight junior high schools, and eight senior high schools.

The children had been eating pizza and frozen burritos, and washing it down with sodas and chips. I was commissioned to provide foods that are lower in fat and salt, with more fruit and vegetables. The challenge is to select foods that the children will actually like to eat.

On the opening day of school, the children were served Chicken Chili Verde, rice and tortillas, Shepherd's Pie, Albondigas soup, tomato basil soup, and angel hair pasta. Everybody was happy!

An aspect of my consulting business is recipe and marketing material development for food growers and manufacturers. For example, I did the recipes and food styling for the service brochures published by Desert Glory, which markets the cherry and grape tomatoes you find in grocery stores. I also created a set of recipes for them to distribute with their products.

I try to direct my attention towards meeting the actual needs of my clients in creative and practical ways. I blend customer's wishes and requirements with the reality imposed by such things as budget and the skill level of the staff or customer.

When I write a recipe for a box of Uncle Ben's Rice, for example, I have to think of how much time the at-home cook can devote to preparing a given dish, the ingredients required, and the probable skill-level of the cook. There's an art to combining creativity with common sense in meeting a client's needs. I try to provide the best product for a customer based upon his/her wishes and resources.

Helping People to Put on the Dog

The third part of our business is an Event Center. We stage events both at the center itself and offsite locations. We have onsite facilities for up to 250 people. I do a couple hundred of these a year, sometimes two or more a day.

Events may be as uncomplicated as a couple getting together with a small or large group of their friends for a birthday or anniversary party. At other times, we serve very large groups of people for all types of private and fund raising events.

With large events, we often do a strolling affair, with guests free to move from one food center to another, to the bar, the open terrace that overlooks the bay, or just sit and visit other guests. Each of the food centers offers entrees of a particular type, so that there is something to suit everyone's taste.

Our selections include a lot of popular items, generally avoiding exotic dishes and foods that taste odd to western palates. We do however, frequently offer an extensive Sushi Bar as this has become a very popular and much in demand item.

The chefs and student chefs managing the food stations are very proactive. They have an attitude of selling their food. "Will you try the Kobe Beef?" they might say. "It has been marinated in sugar cane ... ."

We also get creative with our service sometimes. With the Murdoch affair, we were in an airplane hangar so to get the food out in a timely manner, hot or cold as the case might be, I sent servers out on Segways. It was a real hit!

At another event, all servers were dressed in colorful outfits and carrying flaming trays with each course being offered to each table with a great deal of flare.

We have a great variety of events. For example, we do an annual event for the Lamborghini Club and Mazda U.S.A. during Concourse each year.

Mixing Learning with Fun

Lamborghini always has a dinner party, while Mazda U.S.A, led by their President and C.E.O., do a great teambuilding where they cook their own dinner with the guidance of our chefs, decorate their tables, and put on a wonderful dinner party that they have had the fun of preparing themselves, while getting better acquainted with all of their guests.

Another example of an event we do on a regular basis is a recent event we staged for Perot Systems. We call it The Titanium Team Challenge. Participants are split into three teams, each with their own chefs and assistants. They are given shirts or aprons with their team colors, and then they have three hours to complete their tasks, and present their creations for judging and then dinner.

Each team was given a scavenger hunt list, money, and a four-person surrey bicycle and sent out to find the items on their list. They had to purchase the food, return to the center, and create four dishes, including two mandatory dishes with the help of a chef instructor and two dishes on their own.

Points were given for the style and creativity they showed in presenting and explaining their dishes to the other teams. This had to be done with a limerick, charade, or a rap song. This could get pretty funny!

After the judging, participants ate the wonderful food they had created, and the winning team was awarded a trophy.

Any successful food service is about perceived value. The profit margins can be either small or huge, but clients must believe that they are getting good value for their money. We don't make a profit by cutting corners or trying to low-ball a potential event.

Customers are glad to hire us because they feel they are getting their money's worth. If a family spends a lot of money on a big reception, they figure the money was well spent if their guests say things like "the food was incredible."

When an event involves someone like Ted Turner or Rupert Murdock on this peninsula, they can choose from over 600 area restaurants, plus a lot of big caterers.

How did they come to choose us? Perceived value! We'll serve their guests delicious Kobe Beef on Sugar Cane Skewers with a Korean BBQ marinade, or anything else they may request.

The presentation will be awesome, and their guest will tell them what great food they served. How much is that worth?

I feel honored that The Culinary Center after only six years of being in business is now considered along with the big players. That's a great validation considering the immense talent on the peninsula, and we're still the new kid on the block.

I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because I get to do just what I want to do all day long, cook and teach others to cook. And, I get to do it with vistas of historic Cannery Row and the beautiful Monterey Bay right outside my windows.