First class from Culinary Institute of Virginia graduates

The 20-month program costs about $35,750, including books and knives. The 60 graduates wore white chef's jackets, not black gowns.

The after-ceremony edibles included shrimp bisque, smoked salmon and asparagus rolls, mini-beef Wellingtons.

No doubt, the most scrumptious local graduation of the season. The teachers expected nothing less.

The commencement Friday afternoon was the first of the Culinary Institute of Virginia, launched two years ago by ECPI College of Technology to provide a cooking school for the region.

Johnson & Wales University, a nationally renowned culinary school, had maintained a local presence for nearly a quarter-century. It closed its Norfolk school in May 2006 to consolidate with a new campus in Charlotte, N.C.

Since the Culinary Institute opened in September 2006, Todd Jurich has had more than a handful of its students as interns at his Norfolk restaurant, Todd Jurich's Bistro. "All signs are good that they're succeeding and exceeding expectations," Jurich said Friday.

"I think it's a wonderful asset that we have a school of that caliber in the area," he said. "I would stack them up to the other universities: Johnson & Wales, Le Cordon Bleu, CIA " - industry shorthand for the Culinary Institute of America, with which the local school has no affiliation.

Hans Schadler, executive chef for Colonial Williamsburg, has worked with four of the Culinary Institute's students. "At the level they come to us, their knife skills and their overall skill set is just where I feel they need to be," said Schadler, who serves on the school's advisory board.

"I'm definitely confident they will more than fill the void" left by Johnson & Wales' departure, he said.

One of the graduates, Michael Hendricks, 28, of Norfolk, called it "an amazing program. I was very impressed with the experience and culinary knowledge of all of the chef instructors."

Jason Smith, 23, of Virginia Beach, said the school helped him master varied skills - from pricing a menu to creating mother sauces.

"It's still fresh, it's still new, so they're tweaking everything," Smith said.

Like many graduates, both found full-time cooking jobs at places where they interned: Hendricks at Coastal Grill, and Smith at Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel, both in Virginia Beach.

Other businesses that have hired graduates include assisted-living facilities and country clubs, said Andy Gladstein, the school's director of student services and community affairs.

Most, he said, are staying in the area. But Ashley Fruci, 20, left Norfolk last month to work as a line cook at the four-star Hotel Hershey in Pennsylvania.

Attending a new school, Fruci said, turned into an advantage "because they had something to prove. There was no culinary school in Norfolk anymore. They knew the first class had to be something really special."

The Culinary Institute took Johnson & Wales' former location, off Robin Hood Road, near Military Highway.

The school occupies 35,000 square feet and has five cooking kitchens and one baking kitchen. It recently added a mixology room for learning the fine art of preparing cocktails and soon will open a 100-seat demonstration theater, said its director, Dorothea Bovani.

The 20 -month program costs about $35,750, including books and knives.

The school has 225 students and could grow to 300 by year's end, Bovani said. The average class size, she said, is 16 students. That ratio, Jurich said, probably gives the students more "hands-on work with the teachers" than at other culinary schools.

Classes include Pastry Arts, Meat/Fish Fabrication and Advanced

Table Service. Each student must do two internships.

Smith remembers helping his mother make lasagna when he was growing up.

These days he likes to saute pasta. "I really like saute ing anything - spinach, pan-seared chicken," he said. "I'm a pyro at heart. You've kind of got to be at this business to succeed."

One of Fruci's favorite dishes at Hershey is chicken linguine Alfredo. Hendricks most likes creating roasted grouper with basil eggplant cream sauce and blackened rockfish with cucumber and onion vinaigrette.

The reception after the graduation - both were at the Norfolk Airport Hilton - also featured a smorgasbord of delicacies, including scallop and chive puffs, lamb chop lollipops with apple mint chutney, and prosciutto and asparagus rolls.

Credit for those, Bovani said, goes to the junior students, not the graduates.

"We didn't want to make them work for their own graduation," she said.

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com