Do yourself a favor and take a trip to Hyde Park, New York. Make a weekend of it. You can visit the Franklin Delano Roosevelt house and library, the Vanderbilt mansion, and the 170 acre Culinary Institute of America. The CIA is especially good to visit if you and your kids are foodies.
A campus with 2,300 to 3,000 students, you’ll see the young chefs-to-be walking around the area wearing chef jackets. Not what you think of as a traditional school, though in a traditional-looking setting. It’s a gorgeous property and they’ve been there since 1970 (the school is much older, but moved to this property then).
We recently went for lunch. The restaurants are student-run. Our waiter was a final semester chef student, who has a job waiting for him in Manhattan. The students learn all aspects of the business.
Your destination will be the Roth building, the majestic red brick building with flags on it and a giant terrace. Here you’ll find the campus restaurants, the student bookstore, and your tour guide. There is free covered parking in several lots underneath. Just follow the signs. Wander around the floor, there’s a lot to see. Look online for guided tour times before, so you can coordinate your visit and dining around that.
The five-story Roth building also holds classrooms, the bakeshop, and the teaching kitchens (some of which have windows, so you can watch the students at work. Above, you’ll see a pastry class. On the other side of the hall, we saw a banquet class. They were producing large quantities of food for that.
Don’t miss the bookstore, which is just inside the main entrance. You’ll find the usual t-shirts, hats, and books. Granted, these books are cookbooks. You’ll also find a large wall of kitchen gadgets and an aisle of cocktail supplies and cookie cutters. Rollling pins? They got them too. It’s fun to look through and see what the CIA thinks is important for student chefs, and what brands and styles they endorse enough to sell to their students.
The hall below tells CIA’s history on the walls as you walk through, and you can see into the windows to watch student chefs at work.
Make a reservation for the American Bounty restaurant, which offers produce and products from the Hudson Valley since 1982. There’s a tavern inside American Bounty (no reservation needed for the tavern, but it is currently closed). The Bocuse Restaurant (the fancier one), which serves French cuisine in a modern setting. There are a few other restaurants at CIA as well.
The Apple Pie Bakery Cafe has eat-in or takeaway food and desserts. This is a great place to dine when visiting the Culinary Institute of America with kids, especially if your kids are young. Choose from delectable pastries and desserts that will be better eaten there (though they do have appropriate boxes), or packaged cookies (mmmm the gluten-free chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, and lemon cookies) and sweets (like white chocolate pistachio toffee).
Farquharson Hall was renovated in 2001 by the Canning Studios, who also renovated Grand Central Station. So when you look at the lights overhead, you might see some similarity. The room used to be the chapel for the former Jesuit school, and the stained glass and other artwork in there (plus the organ) will make sense through that lens.
While visiting the Culinary Institute of America with kids, check out the Egg, the food hall inside the student center (see asparagus and artichoke gate in the first picture). Here you’ll find a great selection of food options, and even a brewery. We saw students in jackets and ties inside the brewery learning about the beer-making process. This is a good place to grab a bite to eat if you’re not interested in a sit-down formally-served meal. If it’s nice weather, grab a seat outside. Plus that gate is just fun.
Some fun facts when visiting the Culinary Institute of America with kids.
- Here’s what they go through in food each year:
- 95,000 pounds of butter
- 1 million eggs
- 250,000 pounds of flour (37 types of flour)
- 50,000 pounds of cheese (150 types of cheese)
- 12,500 heads of broccoli
- 32,000 pounds of chocolate (32 types of chocolate)
- 210,000 pounds of potatoes
- 152,000 pounds of onions
- All of this in its 41 kitchens and bakeshops!