Lane Community College’s culinary program is a launch pad for careers in the kitchen

When Chef Michael Landsberg first connected with Lane Community College’s culinary program 12 years ago, it was simply to recruit students for the restaurant he was running at King Estate Winery. That practical partnership quickly evolved into something bigger. 

Landsberg was tapped to start managing the program at LCC, which he has continued to do even as his own career trajectory has changed. 

“I taught the students, I saw how the program was laid out,” Landsberg said. “Having that direct connection with students was a win-win.”

While some of the program’s graduates go elsewhere for work, the majority stay here, Landsberg said, and there are plenty of opportunities for them in the Eugene-Springfield area, in and out of restaurant kitchens.

A foundation built on classical training

LCC’s one-year culinary program follows a three-term structure that takes students from knife skills to running a professional kitchen. The fall term covers classic French fundamentals such as stocks and sauces, soups, chicken butchery, egg cookery, and salads. 

Winter term focuses entirely on butchering and charcuterie, with students breaking down fish, chicken, lamb, beef, and pork while making sausages, pâté, and other dishes from the meats. 

Landsberg gears the education toward efficiency and repeatability rather than individual dish presentation. 

“So they’re not making a dish; they’re making three dishes, because it’s all about speed. It’s all about consistency,” Landsberg said. “Not making one dish and making it cute. That’s not reality.”

Spring term takes place in LCC’s Renaissance Room, where students cook and serve for the public in a real restaurant in LCC’s Center Building.

“It’s based on American cuisine, so every week represents a different region of this country,” said Landsberg. “There’s a lot of firsts — first time (working) front of the house, first time using a POS system, first making mocktails, first making desserts, first making breads.”

Students rotate through each station of the Renaissance Room at least twice. It’s here that the theoretical becomes practical, and students experience the pressure of a real service. 

LCC graduates have earned nominations for dining’s highest honor, the James Beard Awards, in recent years, including Crystal Platt from Eugene’s Lion & Owl restaurant, and Max Petty, who now runs restaurants in Seattle. 

Finding their path

LCC’s program has evolved over time. The most significant change was condensing the program from two years to one, after recognizing better success rates with a shorter time commitment. 

The pandemic, which forced remote learning over video and reduced capacity in the kitchen, nearly shuttered the program entirely. But they are now operating at full capacity, with 30 students across two cohorts. 

Landsberg realizes many more career opportunities exist for people to work in food than there were when he started his career. 

“The first six years of being here, I thought the purpose was that everyone wants to be a cook in a restaurant,” he said. “The last six years, I’ve expanded my vision and thinking. There’s so much more now. There’s food trucks, influencers, cookbook authors, teaching … I don’t assume everyone wants to be a restaurant cook anymore.”

Landsberg also noticed an increase in older students who want out of their stifling careers. He encourages them without sugarcoating it. 

“It’s a lot of standing on your feet all day, it’s very hard work. Long hours, hot environment, chaotic environments, (lack of) pay equity …,” he said. “I tell them, ‘You don’t go hungry, you don’t make a lot of money, but you make enough money to live,’ and they know all these things and they are still excited about it.”

Sydney Johnstone, a student preparing to graduate next week, came to the program after decades working in various health care-related fields, as a personal chef, and as a cooking instructor. She has plans to teach community cooking classes, and felt it would be important to earn her cooking credentials in the program. 

Johnstone plans to launch Lily of the Valley Ranch Kitchen, offering cooking classes on a 105-acre ranch off Territorial Highway.

“It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do,” Johnstone, 60, said. “After retirement, I decided I’m going to do this. … It’s never too late to follow your dreams, whether it’s just your hobby or a second career.”

Dante Castille, 29, works as a transition assistant at Springfield High School, mentoring incoming freshmen. After six years of working in education, he went to LCC to become a culinary arts instructor and evolve that into alternative therapy spaces centered around cooking as a form of expression.

For Castille, cooking is a way to help young people understand the value of putting time into building a skill. 

“There’s a lot of instant gratification out there,” said Castille. “A lot of kids just don’t know what to do with their time. And because of that, some of them get lost in the noise and don’t know where to put their energy. Cooking is a very practical way to solve that, because everybody eats.”

Castille hopes to share the value of sitting down to a meal with family members, learning how to take care of your own needs, and how to work with a team. 

“I really love being in the kitchen,” he said. “You do gain more confidence the more skills you acquire. And when you give people food, it’s an expression of yourself. I’m not an artist, I can’t draw, but I can express myself through food in a way that kind of shows who I am. So to be able to do that, I think, is pretty special.”

Beyond the kitchen

Landsberg’s own journey gives him a lot of experience to pull from in the kitchen. Landsberg and his wife, Tobi Sovak, have extensive fine dining experience. 

Landsberg was born in Vietnam and adopted at age 5 by a Jewish family from New Jersey. He was the youngest of four, always in the kitchen by his mother’s side.

He started working in restaurants on the Jersey Shore at 12, helping with the summer tourists. As a hyperactive kid, he said, the fast pace of kitchen work suited him. 

“Food was my happy place,” Landsberg said. “Kitchen work was perfect for that pent-up energy because it never stops.”

After attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Landsberg worked in New York restaurants, then got more classic training at Michelin-starred restaurants in Germany and France. He spent 10 years in Los Angeles, then went to San Francisco, where he was chef de cuisine at a fine dining restaurant called The Heights. That’s where he and Sovak, the pastry chef, met. 

Sovak worked as the pastry chef locally at Marché and then at King Estate Winery, where Landsberg was executive chef. At the time, Landsberg was also promoting Oregon wine through dinners in Tokyo. Rather than continue to pursue that opportunity, they opened Noisette Pastry Kitchen at 200 W. Broadway in 2011.

While his own career could certainly have turned out differently, Landsberg enjoys the teaching role at LCC and a different kind of success that is not measured in number of stars. 

“I enjoy it,” he said. “If you’re not having fun, it’s really hard. You gotta laugh, you gotta have fun. If you’re not passionate about it, it’s visible.”