The popularity of some TV shows says something very ominous about the viewing public (illustration: My Super Sweet 16). Others are just a little curious: Why have Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen gotten folks in such a lather? "Look, that guy is slicing something while that other guy stirs something and a third guy yells at them both!" What's fundamentally sexy about that?

But in my experience, cooking professionally has always had a little drama and va-va-voom to it. Saying I went to culinary school elicited way more "oohs" than if I'd gone to med school or gotten my MBA. Maybe circus school would have been cooler, but not by much.

So, from time to time, I think I'll post about what the experience was like.

At the California Culinary Academy, students seemed to fit pretty neatly into three categories. The biggest group was the whippersnappers, many of them just out of high school. For them, the decision was between cosmetology, air conditioning and refrigeration, or cooking school—their folks had some college tuition money that needed spending, and since the whisk is much sexier than the Freon reclaimer, the kids ended up  at the CCA.

The second group was comprised of second-careerists. Lots of Silicon Valley refugees, a handful of academics, a few lawyers, and a couple venture capitalists with romantic notions about learning to make the perfect hollandaise at the foot of some wise old gastronome like M.F.K. Fisher.

The last group was made up of women d’un certain âge who had been told by the fans at home that their cooking kicked some royal booty. Their spouses were suffering under the burden of too many profiteroles and cassoulets with extra duck cracklings, so these ladies attended culinary school prophylactically, to stave off family angioplasty.

I wasn't in any of those categories, really. I didn't go because I wanted to cook. I wanted to be a food critic. I had scrutinized the bylines of the reviewers in food magazines and major newspapers, and from what I could tell, these people were well-traveled, well-to-do eating machines. They could describe an outrageous little foie gras dish with a kiln-dried cherry sauce they once ate in Strasbourg, but would be entirely flummoxed if you handed them a bag of cherries and pointed at the kiln. I was going to rise through the ranks on the basis of my gritty, hands-on approach to learning the ropes.

At least that was the plan.