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At a time when major corporations are downsizing and opportunities for skilled laborers are tight, one profession never will lack for job openings.

After all, the masses must be fed.

Many of tomorrow's professional cooks, chefs and restaurateurs are getting their start in this city, which boasts prominent schools including Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and Bidwell Training Institute. Also, a string of accomplished culinarians, including the former and the current presidents of the Culinary Institute of America -- the country's No. 1 chef-training facility -- are Pittsburgh natives or honed their kitchen skills here.

Many culinary students are fresh out of high school, not even allowed to taste the real stuff in bartending courses. Then there are the mature students, at times older than their instructors. Many of them discovered long after high school or college that they were in the wrong business. Or, cooking professionally came as a natural extension of experiences in their home kitchens.

These "second-career" chefs often leave high-paying, sometimes glamorous jobs to take entry-level cooking positions that might start at little more than minimum wage. In the food-service business, the hours are long and hard and the conditions are stressful: People who want to succeed in the industry must be team players with moxie.

The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., estimates that 15 percent of its student body is made up of "career changers" and other nontraditional students, according to spokesman Jeff Levine. Locally, they include former sales managers, bankers, accountants, computer consultants and corporate marketers.

Among them are Susie Treon, former executive chef of the Cafe at the Frick, who is self-taught; Judy Zarra, chef at Zarra's restaurant in Oakland -- she and her husband, Johnny, used to operate a heavy metal/punk rock venue at the place; and Jim Dietz and Melanie Evankovich, co-owners of Gypsy Cafe on the South Side, both of whom have college degrees in writing.

Here are some of their stories.

Charae Steinhauer and Randy Tozzie

Memphis, Tenn., native Charae Steinhauer was working in the kitchen for the Ruddy Duck Restaurant and Patio Bar at the Ramada Plaza Suites & Conference Center, Downtown, when it closed March 28 for renovation into the Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh City Center.

The 34-year-old single mother -- her daughter, Berkeley, is 4 -- did a quick turnaround. In fact, she is broadening her horizons toward a dream of becoming a restaurateur with her boyfriend, who also is a chef.

"I wanted to gain experience in the front of the house," says Steinhauer, a recent graduate of the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. "We can both cook, but if you get us out of the kitchen, neither one of us knows what to do."

At Mitchell's Restaurant Bar & Banquet Center, Downtown, Steinhauer is familiarizing herself with the dining room side of the business. However, that doesn't mean she doesn't know a thing about keeping the books.

For about 12 years, Steinhauer made her living in the world of finance as vice president of sales for a bank. "I'd fly around the country, making lots of money, and loving it -- but less and less," she says.

When she was home, she enjoyed cooking in her spare time. But merely playing with recipes was unfulfilling.

"I wanted to know how to really cook," she says. "I ran across things in recipes that would intimidate me, so I wouldn't make them. I wasn't comfortable making hollandaise or bechamel sauce, for example."

Tired of her job stress, Steinhauer decided to go to culinary school to get some answers. Her ex-husband's job had brought her to Pittsburgh.

"Pittsburgh Culinary Institute is the third top (cooking) school in the country. I thought, I'm here, it's here, I gotta go. If I don't do this, it will be one of those things I would look back at 40 years from now and say that I really should have gone. I always can go back into finance."

In school, she met Randy Tozzie, a native of Upper St. Clair. Sparks flew while they chopped and sliced, so now they share a home in Carnegie. They also plan to open a place of their own -- perhaps a cafe, deli, diner or catering company.

Tozzie, 41, is another chef who gave up his career to return to his youthful dream.

"Back in the early '80s, I tried to get into culinary arts school at Community College of Allegheny County," he says. He comes from an Italian family where his mother baked bread from scratch and his father cooked spaghetti sauce every Sunday. "There was a lot of cooking going on."

Tozzie found himself among 300 candidates fighting for 25 openings at the school. He didn't make the cut.

He went to California University of Pennsylvania instead -- "not the greatest move on my part" -- but still longed to cook professionally.

He was working at Joseph Horne Co. department store when he got word from friends about some fellows who worked for a brewery, made a good living and got to travel all over to pitch their products.

Recently divorced at that time and with no children to worry about, he says, "it was even more appealing." He moved to Albany, N.Y., to start his new career.

His travels spanned the United States -- meetings in Boston, Florida, Arizona, California, Chicago. At one point, he was a marketing manager for Guinness Bass Import Co., handling 12 wholesalers in Michigan, New York and Vermont. He reported directly to the company in Dublin, Ireland.

Despite the money and the fast-paced single life, Tozzie says, he still wasn't happy.

A plus was that Tozzie had visited many restaurants and taverns in his travels, so the initial flame for cooking still burned.

"I decided to sacrifice the pay and get a (cooking) education as a backup," he says.

He signed up with Pennsylvania Culinary Institute and graduated with a 3.9 grade average -- in the top 10 of his class. He worked his externship at the Duquesne Club, where he remains today, cooking for the employee cafeteria.

"I'm allowed to get creative and am encouraged to develop my own menus," he says. "I can't serve truffled potatoes because I have food costs to maintain, but I feel I'm finally doing something I enjoy.

"Others might like playing baseball or football, but I like taking a basket of food and creating a beautiful and wonderful-tasting meal."

Steinhauer and Tozzie are fortunate in that they work during the daytime Mondays through Fridays and can spend the evenings and weekends with Berkeley as a family. And there's time to plot their next career move.

"Most likely, Randy will be in the kitchen," Steinhauer says. "I can see him living in the kitchen. He has a lot more knowledge than me. He's good at presentation and has had a lot more exposure to fine dining."

Right now, the couple is narrowing down their choices to what they don't want.

"We definitely don't want to open a bar or a fine dining restaurant," says Steinhauer. "Neither one of us wants to spend every night in a restaurant and all day prepping. We're knocking around the idea of catering."

Richard Amster

Richard Amster was a certified public accountant for eight years.

"I hated it every day," says the Squirrel Hill resident. "I couldn't understand the rules, the tax code changes. They didn't make any sense. There were hundreds of pages you had to memorize."

Amster's father -- who is 85 -- has been a certified public accountant for 50 years.

"He's a Merlin," says his son, 48. "He knows every single thing about what he does. He taught me about the value of annuities. When I was a teenager, I was standing up at Texaco stock meetings asking questions. That's the environment I grew up in."

Amster, who grew up in Poughkeepsie. N.Y., says he took accounting seriously and received a college degree in the subject, "but I wasn't very good at it." At 28 years old and feeling miserable, he decided he'd had enough.

"That was no way for me to live the rest of my life." But he was at a loss for what to do next.

He took a career identification test to find out what might suit him. "It was inconclusive," Amster says. "But one of the things it pointed out was that if I do something, I need to see the results quickly."

All of his high school jobs had been in restaurants, and in his adulthood, he had been teaching himself how to bake cakes from Julia Child recipes and making whole-wheat bread -- he was no novice in the home kitchen.

His decision to study culinary arts, however, was "without a thought, spur of the moment," Amster says. He applied to and was accepted at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. -- the nation's best -- and with a new bride by his side, he moved there to the rigors of the two-year curriculum.

After graduation, Amster and his wife moved to Pittsburgh, her hometown, and he went to work. It was a disappointment.

"Pittsburgh was the food non-Mecca of the world," he says. He was catering manager at a hotel, then he skipped through a series of year-long jobs looking for fulfillment. Eventually, he was going to be a father, and he need to start climbing the ladder toward good benefits and income.

"I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had done all the things that I'd needed to to call myself a chef, but I still was working the grunt jobs, two to three at a time. Money was very difficult to come by."

After a decade of frustration, Amster says, "I was earning what I did when I left accounting. I was miserable for a long time. Food service in Pittsburgh is hard work. I thought, 'Nice going, stupid.' It was my worst nightmare."

From out of the blue, Amster was asked to take over a culinary class at Community College of Allegheny County. He liked it. "I was the round peg in the round hole." Then came an instructor position for six years at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute.

That was his epiphany, he says. "I really developed as a person, as a human being. I put everything together I ever learned, even the financial background." He had begun writing a recipe column for a Jewish newspaper and was contributing to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, as well as to trade magazines. He continues as a food journalist.

"PCI gave me confidence," he says. "I would have paid to do that job."

Amster -- now divorced and with a 14-year-old daughter -- has left the culinary institute to tackle the corporate world. He is director of training for Vocelli Pizza, a 116-store chain, formerly Pizza Outlet.

He's back in the classroom, where he belongs.

"I love what I do," he says. "I'm the one person in the training department. I travel to a lot of different stores, review and inspect them, open new ones."

He says he now has a bright attitude about whatever is to come -- as long as it doesn't involve tax codes.

Bright future

The future looks promising for those who are seeking a career in the food service industry, including people who want to make a career change.

According to the National Restaurant Association's Cornerstone Initiative, "The restaurant industry offers opportunities in catering, banquet management, public relations, accounting and senior executive positions. There is a place for everyone in the restaurant industry."

The restaurant industry -- sales are projected to reach $476 billion in the United States in 2005 -- is complemented by more than 1,000 post-secondary restaurant and hospitality management educational programs or culinary programs to help prospective employees achieve their career goals.

Among other statistics:

• Restaurant industry sales are forecast to advance 4.9 percent in 2005 and equal 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

• The overall economic impact of the restaurant industry is expected to exceed $1.2 trillion in 2005, including sales in related industries such as agriculture, transportation and manufacturing

• The number of food service manager is projected to increase 11 percent from 2005 to 2015.

• More than three out of five food service managers have annual household incomes of $50,000 or more.

• Total restaurant industry employment is projected to be 14 million people in 2015, up from 12.2 million in 2005. In 1995, 9.5 million people were employed in food service.

Source: National Restaurant Association, www.restaurant.org

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