So you want to work at Alinea? Landing a stage (a culinary apprenticeship taken on by a chef-in-training before taking on an official full-time position) in the kitchen at the world's tenth-best restaurant has up until now been largely a matter of having either tenacity, luck, or a really good gimmick. But a new website, Culintro, hopes to change all that.
Culintro has partnered with a number of tremendously high-profile chefs, including Alinea's Grant Achatz, to provide wannabe-stagiers with an easy-peasy portal to apply for a stage in America's best restaurants. It's a true hallmark of change in the otherwise very old-school world of culinary apprenticeship.
We asked Achatz why he decided to take his stage program digital, and he told us that "Alinea, along with many of the other top restaurants in the country, get over whelmed with stage requests each month, and is often unable to filter them diligently and accurately. Culintro is able to utilize more resources, such as time and personal contact, with potential stages in order find the best possible fit for both the cook and restaurant then we could do independently. I personally have worked in restaurants that have not been a good fit. I often tell young cooks that it is to everyone benefit to search for a restaurant in the same way you would a significant other. Working in a restaurant requires a great deal of dedication and commitment, and being successful demands a sense of passion that can only happen with the right partnership. I simply don't have time to go on "dates" with potential stages. Culintro is my stand in."
Alina Munoz, a co-founder of Culintro, tells us that the response to the fledgling site's stage program has been very strong. But she reminds us (and any other amateurs out there with Alinea-shaped stars in their eyes) that "Culintro doesn’t guarantee placements unless the “compatibility” seems likely." That elusive question of compatibility is based on a series of questions and answers the site has conducted with participating chefs, who Munoz tells us have been tremendously enthusiastic about the program. Besides Achatz and the handful of other chefs currently participating, there's another dozen waiting in the wings to hand over stage-assignment duties to the website.
