L’Ecole Culinaire is the new culinary school in town

Does Kansas City need another culinary program?

The metro already boasts a highly regarded hospitality program at Johnson County Community College, and the Kansas City branch of Art Institutes International also has a culinary training program.

But Brian Schumann, campus director of the brand-spanking-new L’Ecole Culinaire – the expensively outfitted cooking school that opened yesterday on the Country Club Plaza – tells me that there’s room for one more.

And then there’s also the Culinary Center of Kansas City, located in Overland Park, which offers a full roster of no-credit classes, typically offered to nonprofessionals, that will compete with L’Ecole Culinaire’s “Academy Classes” for men and women who want to sharpen their cooking techniques or learn to prepare dishes from specific cuisines.

“I can’t comment on other culinary programs,” Schumann said.

There are other questions – much bigger ones – yet to be answered by the folks running this for-profit subsidiary of Vatterot Educational Centers, Inc. The school will train restaurant managers and chefs but also line, short-order and institutional cooks. These aren’t generally high-paying careers, but the cost of the training at L’Ecole Culinaire isn’t cheap. (Tuition can run as high as $37,000 for an Associate of Occupational Studies degree.)

Are there good jobs waiting for the graduates?