Getting Ahead: Now They're Cooking

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WITH ITS BLOWN SUGAR sculptures displayed in glass and five-course dessert tastings, Penn Quarter's newly opened chocolate lounge, Co Co. Sala, is Nisha Sidhu's laboratory for sweet. Here Sidhu, 38, pictured above, experiments with chocolate-covered bacon, chocolate caviar and hot candy bars. It's unlike any of the labs that the former biomedical engineer has worked in most of her life: Sidhu's last pre-pastry job was designing medical equipment for the Navy.

"I always had a passion for pastry," says Sidhu, who started baking as a child. "But I was brought up with parents saying you should be an engineer." While at the Navy, she took a few classes at L'Academie de Cuisine, but the idea of making it a full-time career came only after she left her job in 1997 to stay at home with her kids. By the time she decided to get back to work five years later, she was too rusty in engineering to return. So, she decided on pastry, an idea she had been toying with while developing her domestic side as a mom. "It wasn't a surprise, but my parents couldn't understand why I wasn't happy staying at home to bake cakes," says Sidhu.

It turns out that pastry isn't a far leap from engineering either. Assembling showpiece sugar and chocolate sculptures involves drawings similar to architectural designs. And knowing chemistry helps Sidhu create fun, new sugary treats. "Chocolate is such a complex substance because it's a crystal," she says. "You have to really understand its molecular structure."

Washington is peppered with people like Sidhu who traded in left-brained desk jobs for open kitchens. The world of food has beckoned lawyers, lobbyists and others with visions of sugarplums filling their daydreams. With little more than a passion for food and business savvy developed in previous careers, many have opened their own eateries. Meanwhile, many overeducated chefs behind the kitchen doors made the switch after adding culinary school to their list of degrees.

But restaurants aren't all candy land: long hours, grueling work and high stakes can make the food world even more demanding than answering to Congress. Still, those who made the leap have never looked back.

For Michael Babin, president of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the decision to leave behind appropriations lobbying came 11 years ago. Babin, 40, was working long days at Charlie McBride Associates while attending Georgetown law school at night. He wrote the business plan for Evening Star Cafe for a class. At the same time, one of his dot-com clients burned him by hiding important information, shattering his trust in working for others. He decided to make Evening Star a reality in Alexandria so that he could work for himself instead.

"Restaurants are a known quantity," says Babin, who researched local eateries and talked to other owners before taking the plunge. "I could get a real feel for the business, plus I love food." His background comes in handy. Besides negotiating leases, he says that every time he plans a new restaurant or changes an existing one of his group's five, it's like drawing up a business plan for a new client.

Evidence of Mark Kuller's tax law background comes in the form of Proof's newly opened summer sidewalk patio in Gallery Place. Getting the permits took months of wrangling with city officials, something Kuller, 55, pictured right, has plenty of experience with after practicing tax law for 20 years. For years, he toyed with the idea of opening the type of restaurant he loved to frequent. But he only started researching property in 2005 after recovering from a divorce. "The idea had been percolating inside of me, but it's hard to leave a big-time law firm and big money," says Kuller. "My feeling was that I could always go back to law if I failed."

To prepare for Proof's opening, Kuller set up a panini press and held wine tastings in his living room. He talked to other owners and researched restaurants like A.O.C. in Los Angeles. The pie-in-the-sky dream came true when the wine-centered restaurant opened its doors last year. Now Proof's dining room is packed every night of the week, and it's winning nods from restaurant critics.

If anything, Kuller has learned that he has been too successful. "I never expected people would linger for two or three hours — my competitors do a lot more business," he says. And even though it pays less, owning a restaurant has made Kuller the envy of his high-profile law colleagues. "A lot of people come and say to me, 'You are living my dream.'"

For Kuller and Babin, it took law degrees and business experience to start a restaurant, but those looking to work in one need a different kind of education. It took Sidhu more than five years to go from engineer to Co Co. Sala's owner. She graduated from the professional Pastry Arts program at L'Academie de Cuisine in 2003 and then worked at 2941 in Virginia before setting up her own shop.

Former model and accountant Carla Hall, 44, jump-started her own company, Alchemy Caterers, with cookbooks, only later rounding out her background with cooking school. The Howard University graduate worked as an accountant at PWC and then left for Europe to model at runway shows like Betsey Johnson and Workers for Freedom. She fell in love with food in Paris while showing off her svelte frame. In Europe, though she did not cook, she picked up cookbooks lured by beautiful photographs and complete "how tos" on Italian and French cuisine.

After three years in Europe, she returned to Washington, living with her sister while figuring out her next move. "The fluke came when I made food for my sister's baby shower in 1991," says Hall who by then had started experimenting with her cookbooks. She brought the leftovers to a friend's workplace. Inspired by her friend who said that she wished she could eat like that all the time, the next day Hall loaded a basket with creamy, sweet chess pies, turkey biscuits and lemon blueberry bread and sold them at nearby offices. Within a week, the Lunch Bunch had seven clients. For four years, she cooked soup, breads, cakes and other food, concentrating on making healthy food for the black community.

Then in 1995, she, too, went to the L'Academie de Cuisine to bone up her skills. After graduating, she worked in hotel kitchens before starting Alchemy Caterers, where she has prepared food for Al Gore's political fundraisers and corporate clients like the Smithsonian. Now Hall is the teacher, leading classes at Sur La Table. Still, she says, it takes more than training to be a good chef. "You have to put love in your food," says Hall. "If you are not in a good mood, the only thing you should make is a reservation.

» THE SWITCHOVER
These programs won't help you write your restaurant's business plan, but they'll certainly teach you to keep up your souffles.

» L'Academie de Cuisins offers one-year professional culinary and pastry arts programs that start at multiple times through the year. Tuition for the culinary year is $25,725 and for pastry $22,700. LAcademie.com. 16006 Industrial Drive, Gaithersburg, Md., 20877 ; 301-670-8670 or 800-664-CHEF; 301-670-0450
; info@lacademie.com

» The Art Institute of Washington offers half-year and quarter-long programs in culinary arts, baking and culinary management. Tuition varies based on the program selected and on other factors, but ranges from approximately $24,000 for a pastry program to $91,000 for a B.S. in culinary management. ArtInstitutes.edu. 820 North Fort Myer Drive, Arlington, Va., 22209; 703-358-9550 or 877-303-3771.

Written by Express contributor Renuka Rayasam
Photos by Lawrence Luk for Express