In five days I leave for possibly the biggest adventure of my life so far. This summer, I’ll be doing a 2 month culinary internship at Le Jardin des Plumes, a Michelin starred auberge (restaurant and inn) in Giverny, France. Yeah, I know. I don’t really believe either. But my plane leaves for Paris at 6:30am this Wednesday, so I guess it better be real!
If you’re wondering how I landed this internship, well…beats me! Well, okay, I am pretty into food. I love cooking, and I do cook a lot. After talking to my parents about wanting to do a culinary internship this summer, my dad contacted his friend in France and asked if he knew where I could look for an opportunity. Turns out his wife works with the chef/restaurant owner’s parents, so soon enough I got an email address and a request for my curriculum vitae and letter of motivation as soon as possible. Well, my schoolwork got pushed to the back burner as I spent the next several days obsessively writing my application. And then finding out he may not speak English. And yes, translating my application to French.
Oh! Do I speak French? Ummmmmm….maayyyybbyyeess…? Here’s my French background (feel free to skip this paragraph if you really don’t care. or any/all paragraphs for that matter): I went to French school in kindergarten. I learned to speak and understand decently. Then I lost it all. Literally all. Just kidding, I kept the accent. And I knew the phrase “Quel dommage du fromage”. That means “What a shame of cheese”. It’s a well known saying in my family because my sister made it up and when she was little and like to rhyme (she went to French school for 8 years, so she actually still speaks very well…wouldn’t that be nice!) Anyway, as I was saying, I lost all my French except my accent. I have to say, it is pretty cool that I have that - I really appreciate not having as bad of an American accent as most people from here do… But the losing my speaking abilities was a bummer. However, before going to Europe last summer with one of my best friends, Adrienne, I decided I wanted to learn back some French. So I studied for about two and a half months using Pimsleur (similar to Rosetta stone); I played the CDs in my car and learned my French whenever I drove. I got through about eighty 30-minute lessons total. Then I went to Europe, including France for about 5 days, where I was able to speak a little, but my French was pretty limited, to put it mildly. So this past March, after deciding I might be interested in interning in France this summer, I picked up my studying again. Using primarily my iPhone. There’s this free app called Duolingo, which if you are interested in learning a language, I highly recommend. So for the past 3 months I’ve been learning French through Duolingo, taking two conversation classes at Stanford (it was too late to take a regular French class, and I wanted to focus my time on conversation, not as much grammar and writing), watching and reading things in French (we have all the Tin Tin episodes and lots of children’s books), and speaking as much as I can with my family, my family friend and childhood nanny, Gloria, and anyone else who will speak with me.
But back to my application. At this point I was just starting to relearn my French, and I hadn’t even started learning to write. So I had help with translating - I can’t thank you enough for that Gloria!! Just for the hell of it I put together a website with pictures of some of the foods I’ve made to add to my application. If you’re interested in seeing it, here’s the link: Monisha White’s Food Gallery. So I sent off my application, and five days later I heard back. I actually heard back with an email saying that his restaurant I asked to intern at, La Mare aux Oiseaux, was already full. However, he offered me a spot at his new restaurant, Le Jardin des Plumes - another Michelin starred restaurant in what turns out to be an even more appealing location: Giverny is just a 45 minute train ride outside of Paris, and it’s the home of Claude Monet and his gardens, including all the water lilies he painted. Which happen to be some of my favorite paintings and the ones I remember most from my past trips to France. And there you have it. That’s how I landed this internship.
But to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know how I got a spot. Beyond cooking at home for friends and family, cheffing for some of our family’s big dinners and birthdays with 15-20 people, doing a week-long culinary course, taking one cooking class in italy, and catering for two of my mom’s business meetings of around 15 people, I really have no true kitchen experience. Well, that list was a little longer than I was expecting it to be. But still, I’ve never been to culinary school, and I’ve never worked in a professional kitchen.
Yet here I am, about to work for two months in not just any restaurant, but a Michelin starred restaurant in France. And I have pretty much no idea what I’m getting myself into. Or, I used to have no idea. I’ve been doing a lot of researching and looking at blogs, and have now developed a much better sense of how how terrified I should be for this summer :) I’ve never been more excited!
No comments:
Post a Comment