When the former Hastings Hotel in Hartford came on the market, the Connecticut Culinary Institute pounced. The building’s 367,000 square feet trumped CCI’s 115,000 square-foot Suffield facility. More space plus an urban location could mean brand new, commercial-grade kitchens, on-site housing — and new business ventures.
“Education is what we do, but these [business enterprises] are sort of natural synergistic fits,” said Brooke Baran, CCI’s vice president of corporate affairs.
The preliminary renovations preserved the educational focus, with the installation of six “enviable,” commercial-grade kitchens. Six more are scheduled to be built next year.
The building’s top seven floors have become full-service residence halls, which now house 540 students.
The new facility also allows CCI to take teaching food to a commercial level. For the students, it means exposure to real-world food industries. For the for-profit institute, it could mean some serious added revenue.
The first of CCI’s side ventures was Capitol City Catering Company.
“Catering is a natural progression because we do food all day long,” Baran said.
Real-World Experience
Capitol City operates out of the CCI facility on Sigourney Street. It has booked events for up to 350 people, and the building has banquet halls available for rent. CCI students can even use the company to try out their newly acquired skills, if their schedules permit.
Just as catering made perfect sense, so does the restaurant business. Last summer, CCI opened up its outdoor courtyard for lunch. It was a big hit with the area’s business crowd, and now CCI is poised to take its al fresco lunch café one step further.
By the end of next year, a new restaurant will be coming to Hartford. What was once the Mark Twain Restaurant & Bar in the ground floor of old hotel will become Vintage, an eclectic mix of food flavors and genres.
Vintage will be outfitted with its own show kitchen, constructed with glass on all sides. That means all the kitchen’s inner workings will be visible from both outside on the street and from inside the restaurant.
There also has been talk of a chef’s table. Already chic in über-urban areas like Boston and New York, a chef’s table is one set in the middle of the kitchen where diners can experience its inner workings first hand. It is literally dinner theatre.
“We are always of the philosophy that, if you can’t do it right, don’t do it,” said Baran, whose family also owns the Baran Institute of Technology in East Windsor. “Our goal with the restaurant is to show our students what the best of the best means.”
The restaurant is still a year away, but Baran has made some strong project advances. Capitol City Catering’s executive chef, Jason Truscio, will transition into the executive chef position at the new restaurant, and he is currently developing a menu.
CCI isn’t the first culinary institute to venture into the restaurant market. The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., has five award-winning restaurants under its umbrella.
It’s all part of the students’ training at the Culinary Institute of America, and their revenue supports the nonprofit school.
“We do have stringent guidelines as to what [ventures] we can carry out,” said Jay Blotcher, spokesman for the Hyde Park institute.
