Externship

One of the things we're required to do at school is towards the end of our stay is a externship at a restaurant to get us in gear for the 'real' world of the kitchen. At first I hadn't put much thought into it because it seemed pretty far away, but I'm due to graduate in June - my externship will be leading up to graduation.

I'm slowly coming up with a list of places that I wouldn't mind externing at, though I'm still not sure what it is exactly I want to do when I graduate. Do I want to work the line? Do I want to go into catering? These are things I wrestle with pretty much on a daily basis. Why? Well the more thought I put into it, the better off I'll be when the time arrives.

Here's a short list of places I would like to extern at, including honestly some dream choices that I'm not sure I could get - most of these places are Portland based except for a few and if you know anything some of these are far from the friendly confines of the state of Oregon.

• Paleys Place
• Simpatica
• Gustav's
• H5O
• French Laundry
• Alinea
• Lola
• Lolita
• Le Bernardin

Yes there are some lofty restaurants on there and there are a few more in Portland that I wouldn't mind including Beast, and Higgins. But that's just a rough list at this point and time, I need to sit down with my Chef adviser and see what he thinks should be a good fit. I've really gotten interested in French haute cuisine at this point, though that might have to do with reading Ruhlman's "Chef" series and the fact for Christmas I got "The Art Of Modern Cookery" by Auguste Escoffier.