Another featured presenter for the Educational Best Practices Day on June 20 during the 10th annual CAFÉ Leadership Conference is Elaine Sikorski, CEC, CCE, a chef/instructor in the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts, Chicago, and author of Cooking to the Image:  A Plating Handbook (Wiley, 2012).

Chef Sikorski brought a wealth of industry experience to Kendall when she joined the faculty as a chef instructor in 1007.  She has led the kitchens at famed Le Perroquet in Chicago, as well as Les Nomades.  For nearly eight years, she served as sous chef, then executive chef, of Hotel-Restaurant au Cygne in Rixheim, France.  At Kendall, Sikorski teaches advanced sauces and fish cookery, among other courses.  She has received two of the college's highest honors for teaching excellence.  Sikorski graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1984 and later earned her bachelor's in food and nutrition at Dominican University in River Forest, Ill.

Reading the Plate:  Plating and presentation play vital roles in how we experience food. While the quality of the ingredients, textures and paring of flavors are key elements to creating a successful dish, mastering the art of presentation is the final step of culinary achievement-one that exposes a food professional's deepest beliefs about what food is and how food should be. Today, images of food are sometimes more important than the actual food experience. Beginning from a historical menu perspective, this session will offer an overview of design methodology to plating, exploring traditional, time-honored archetypes and their reinterpretation for contemporary plating. Additionally, this session will explain why we, as teachers and trainers in the art of cookery, must provide not only the necessary technical skills to achieve desired results, but also the ability to recognize previous presentation styles so students of cooking may develop their own personal styles.

To register for the 10th Annual CAFÉ Leadership Conference which will be held in Salt Lake City, June 19-21, go to http://cafemeetingplace.com/cafe-events/2014-leadership-conference

Foodservice instructors and leaders of programs at all levels of instruction are welcome.