News & Events
Gifford Miller, Al Vann, Yvonne Graham and Other Supporters Break Bread with City Tech Students and Faculty at Luncheon Marking Launch of College’s Culinary Facilities Upgrade
From left, CUNY Vice Chancellor and Secretary of the Board of Trustees Jay Hershenson, City Tech President Russell K. Hotzler, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and City Tech Hospitality Management Chair James Reid with “Hoffman’s Playland,” a sugar piece that won the 2004 “Best of Show” at the International Hotel, Motel & Restaurant Show in November.
Earlier in November, City Tech President Hotzler, far right, hosted a luncheon for Borough President Marty Markowitz, center, to thank him for his efforts. Also pictured, from left, are City Tech Hospitality Management Chair James Reid and Professors Karen Goodlad and Francis Lorenzini.
New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan) admits to a passion for cooking and spends a lot of time in the kitchen at home. Councilmember Albert Vann (D-Crown Heights) makes no such claim, but will tell you that he does make a terrific cup of tea.
Miller, Vann and Brooklyn Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham were among the guest speakers at a thank-you luncheon hosted for them on November 30 by New York City College of Technology’s new president, Russell K. Hotzler, and the students and faculty of the College’s award-winning hospitality management program. Councilmember Letitia James (D-Clinton Hill) was represented by Deputy Chief of Staff Ray Martin, and Vice Chancellor and Secretary of the Board of Trustees Jay Hershenson, joined by Director of City Relations John Kotowski, represented The City University of New York.
The occasion marked the official launching of a major renovation of the program’s culinary training facilities. While the program continues to produce many of New York City and the nation’s most talented chefs and top restaurateurs, the teaching kitchens are much the same as they were when last upgraded more than 40 years ago. But thanks to several sizable grants totaling $2.2 million secured by Brooklyn City Council members, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the Independence Community Foundation, all of that is about to change. Other major donors include Bogdanow Partners Architects PC and industrial kitchen design firm Pascoe-Jacobs Associates, Inc., which are contributing a variety of in-kind services to the project.
Initial work will begin this winter. The major construction and finishing work will be done over the next two summers to avoid disrupting fall and spring semester classes for the 700 students enrolled in the program.
Citing the top priority the City Council places on fulfilling the promise of educational access and opportunity for all New Yorkers and supporting that promise through adequate funding, Miller spoke of The City University of New York as “the one institution out there trying to help all people make a better life for themselves and their families. Investing in CUNY is a great investment.”
Vann echoed those sentiments and commended City Tech students on the many ways they demonstrate their excellence and for the purpose and direction they are bringing to their lives. Vann held up the tall white chef’s hat he and the other guests had been presented and promised to wear it next time he brewed that “great cup of tea.”
Speaking for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who was out of town, Deputy Borough President Graham spoke of Brooklyn “as more than the ‘Borough of Churches.’ Marty also thinks of it as the ‘Hospitality Borough,’ and, for sure, we’re going to have a world-class kitchen right here in Downtown Brooklyn.”
Fresh on the heels of their first-place triumph at the 2004 International Hotel,
Motel & Restaurant Show in Manhattan, City Tech hospitality management students
join, from left to right, President Russell K. Hotzler; Ray Martin, representing
Councilwoman Letitia James; Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Yvonne Graham;
City Council Speaker Gifford Miller; Councilman Albert Vann; and, far right,
CUNY Vice Chancellor and Secretary of the Board of Trustees Jay Hershenson. The
event was a thank-you luncheon for elected officials who helped raise $2.2 million
to renovate the College’s culinary kitchens.
In a statement from his office, Councilmember David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights) said, “Programs such as these benefit our community by providing college-aged New Yorkers with a valuable skill that allows these students to immediately contribute to their neighborhoods. But City Tech’s hospitality management program does not just benefit the taste buds of Brooklynites,” he added, “it enables the young professional chefs to build a career on what they’ve learned there.”
In expressing the College’s gratitude to Miller, Vann, other members of the Council’s Brooklyn delegation, Brooklyn Borough Hall, and the other contributors, President Hotzler called their successful
effort “a shot in the arm for an academic program that has been a centerpiece
of City Tech for more than 50 years.”
For Department of Hospitality Management Chair James Reid, “a state-of-the-art renovation of our culinary arts teaching facilities will further enable us to provide students with the training and education commensurate with the increasingly sophisticated demands of the food service industry.”
According to recent graduate Ebow Dadzie, one of a group of alumni, students and faculty who helped City Tech garner three top prizes at November’s 2004 International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, “When you look at what we did with what we had to work with, imagine what future students are going to do with better equipment and materials."
Under Hospitality Management Professsors Jean Claude and Dalila Mercado’s direction, students prepared and served a sumptuous three-course meal to those being thanked at the luncheon. The menu included cabbage and apple salad, blanquette of veal and, for dessert, baba au rhum. The event was covered by Daily News staff writer Elizabeth Hays, Brooklyn Daily Eagle managing editor Ranaan Geberer and Courier-Life Publications photographer Paul Martinka. Both the Daily News and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran feature stories on the luncheon and kitchen renovation project on December 1. Upcoming issues of Brooklyn’s Progress and Courier-Life Publications community-based papers will feature additional stories.
Since its founding in 1947, City Tech’s culinary arts program has produced many of the nation’s leading restaurateurs, chefs and food purveyors, including Rocky Aoki (Benihana of Tokyo), Michael Romano (Union Square Café), Sherry Yard (Wolfgang Puck’s Spago Beverly Hills), David Liberman (David’s Cookies), and the late Patrick Clark (Tavern on the Green), in addition to City Tech Foundation board member and celebrity chef Michael Lomonaco (Guastavino’s and co-host of the Travel Channel food show “Epicurious”), who chaired a College committee responsible for bringing plans to modernize the teaching kitchens to fruition.
The hospitality management program at City Tech was the first in the metropolitan New York area to offer a degree in restaurant and hotel management. Its students are proficient in all areas of the diverse hospitality industry, from the culinary arts and lodging management and marketing to all aspects of travel and tourism. It remains one of City Tech’s flagship baccalaureate programs.
12/08/04
