Best Orange County Culinary Arts Schools: Cook Laguna Beach Style

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Future chefs: here in the OC lives “the good life.” Along with that is a dynamic dining scene fueled by the visionary culinary skills of new and established chefs. Would you expect anything less?

Orange County is sandwiched between Los Angeles and San Diego and bordered by the Pacific Ocean. The area’s rep is wealth and power and pre-Dotcom bust was once a powerful tech area. For career-driven culinary students the area is rich in money and where there is wealth, there is always excellent food and drink to be found. Tech slide aside, the OC is a Cali hotspot and as such is a destination for fine dining and upscale eats.

Let’s not leave out the tourist trade. Disneyland makes OC home. Here is one of the nation’s most trafficked resorts and in and of itself has a high demand for experienced food service pros, from executive chefs, to station cooks, dishwashers and “front of the house” hosts and wait staff.

Speaking of the OC’s Disneyland, remember in what types of venues chefs and cooks are needed: restaurants, hotels, resorts, convention centers, institutions, hospitals and medical centers, spa resorts, and in corporate diningrooms. Orange County has all of these.

The Food and Chef Scene in OC

Remember, also that OC is right in the heart of some stellar food production. Originally this was a citrus Mecca and the California wineries spill down from Napa and Sonoma to include areas in this region, as well. But like most Cali communities flavorful, clean, and farm fresh foods take a front seat.

If you’re dynamic, charismatic, excitable and energetic then bring your food inventiveness. Top chef-driven restaurants in OC include:

• Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, executive chef Rob Wilson
• Antonello, executive chef Franco Barone
• Sage, chef-owner Richard Mead

Want to be an executive chef or chef owner in the OC? Get cooking at an OC culinary school.

Local Community Schools

CulinaryLab Cooking School

The professional programs CulinaryLab Cooking School eschew textbooks and other trappings of traditional learning with modern methods such as videos and other online instruction materials and an emphasis on hands-on learning. The school offers apprenticeship programs at top restaurants ands bakeries and also offers culinary classes for the novice home cook.

CulinaryLab Cooking School
17231 17th St B
Tustin, CA 92780
714-248-0203

Non-accredited Cooking Schools

Le Gourmet Culinary

A kitchen design and remodeling company, Le Gourmet Culinary also offers cooking classes. Its culinary lessons offer individualized teaching from instructors, and modest class sizes, wirth up to 12 people in most classes and up to 14 people in their French Macaron classes.

Le Gourmet Culinary
541 W Chapman Avenue, Suite A,
Orange, CA 92868
714-888-5029
Office@leGourmetCulinary.com

Culinary Kids

Culinary Kids' camps and classes introduces young learners between the ages of 5 and 13 to the joys of the culinary arts. Children are invited to create create themed dishes toshare with family and friends. Besides cooking classes, it also offers after-school enrichment programs, summer camps, and private parties.

Culinary Kids
26895 Aliso Creek Rd Suite B
56 ​Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
949-292-4720