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Culinary careers moving to the front burner

BY MILDRED L. CULP
Source: Daily News
Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 5:14 PM
Gill for News Patricia Catenne

Barnuevo for News Yosef Schwartz

Rosier/News Haidee Isip


With a cable network devoted to food and celebrity chefs becoming as recognizable as rock stars, careers in cooking seem as hot as a busy kitchen in August.
But not many chefs make David Bouley money. In 2007, New York's 5,350 chefs and head cooks averaged $51,340 a year, according to the state Department of Labor. Also, the failure rate of restaurants is extraordinary. Salary wasn't the motivating force for three New Yorkers who talked to Your Money about their decision to spend their career in the kitchen.
Patricia Catenne
Harlem
A modern dancer for almost 20 years, French-born Patricia Catenne baked her first cake when she was just 4.
She came to the U.S. in 2000 to study at the Martha Graham Company after being spotted by an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater instructor in a Paris workshop.
"My family has a long line of private chefs serving great families," she said. "I knew that I could not [dance] forever. Every dancer has a second job."
For six years in New York she'd been building her clientele, cooking for a select group by appointment. Two years ago, she launched Quintessencia, which offers private chef services.
Mostly self-taught, Catenne, 40, earns about $60,000 a year. She said her services involve a lot more than dropping by and whipping up a hot meal.
"I go once or twice a week and plan, like a second mother, and take care of their food for the next two to three days," she said. Services range from $150 to as high as $2,000, for a Christmas dinner party including lobster and foie gras. Catering for large corporations begins at $1,500, and she once catered a wedding for 200 on a $50,000 budget.
About 95% of her clients are women, and buying and preparing food with them is a source of enjoyment.
"Once in a while, we get into the kitchen together or go to market, sharing the love of food and teaching people with issues of food to make it positive in their life," she said.
Yosef Schwartz
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
While growing up in Los Angeles, Yosef Schwartz became hooked on New York during frequent visits his family made to see relatives and friends.
He also became hooked on cooking, although his father, a rabbi, insisted that his sons complete their religious education.
Schwartz, 27, made his father proud, completing studies at Brooklyn's Yeshiva Ohlei Torah at age 20.
"I performed weddings right out of school," Schwartz said. "The first was a friend's from Arizona, right after I got my rabbinical degree. It was a really small wedding in their backyard."
Schwartz's father made good on his promise to fund his son's culinary education, and Schwartz earned his associate's degree from the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena. He specialized in French cuisine.
With his new expertise in classic French techniques, Schwartz landed a $15 an hour job with a kosher caterer in L.A.
Schwartz didn't mind the meager pay because "down the line, if I can't earn great money from it, I believe I will have a better quality of life doing something I love."
Today, he's executive chef and a shareholder in the Brooklyn kitchen of Fresh Diet, which delivers three meals and two snacks at $35 to $45 a day. (A kosher option is $39.99.)
"I make the menus and run the daily production of the meals," said Schwartz, who earns $60,000 a year. "I'm in the health industry. I believe that that's the future."
Haidee Isip
Astoria, Queens
Just 3 years old when she came to New York from the Philippines, Haidee Isip grew up in Forest Hills and Astoria, Queens, and earned her undergrad degree at Hunter College.
For several years, she worked as an office manager for an OB-GYN, then left the country for missionary work in Uganda.
"Although the work had nothing to do with preparing food, I ended up in the kitchen with some of the local women," said Isip, 37. "I'd fix dinners for staff in the evenings. I actually really enjoyed it."
When she came back to America at age 27, she had a new career plan. She enrolled at the French Culinary Institute, studying classic European cooking for a year. After spending $35,000, she was rewarded with a three-month internship, working for a French chef — unpaid.
"It was very tough, because the days were very long in a classic French kitchen, very unforgiving," she said.
Her first paying job came when a restaurant in Lower Manhattan hired her for $10 an hour.
It was demoralizing to know that waiters and waitresses made more on a busy weekend than she took home for the whole week. "It was hard to make ends meet," she said.
Making matters worse, when business was slow, the restaurant cut back her hours. She was sustained by free meals and the knowledge she was following her dream.
These days, Isip works at the Cornell Club on E. 44th St., where she is a chef tournant, which means she cooks at all of the stations. She earns about $45,000 a year there, and also freelances in the Hamptons in the summer.
"I'm not making a fortune, but I get to cook for a living," she said.