14 ADIRONDACK LIFE September + October 2019I
’m a sucker for noodles. And handmade noodles?
Piled in a rich oyster-mushroom broth? Yes, please.
That’s what’s for lunch today—along with a salad of
local greens and feta, a braised pork belly from Ver-
montville’s Kate Mountain Farm, and a scrumptiously sticky
maple-syrup cake—at The Ganzi, Paul Smith’s College’s stu-
dent-run restaurant.
The prix-fixe menu, which changes weekly to showcase
seasonal products, is created by undergrads, prepared by
undergrads and served by undergrads in a classic bow-
tie-apron-suspenders getup. On this early-spring day, there
are about a dozen diners in the 40-seat room, a bright space
outfitted with twiggy accents and celebrity caricatures.
The latter are a nod to the iconic decor of The Palm, a
New York City institution founded in 1926 that’s become anThe Ganzi
Cultivating the next generation of
chefs at Paul Smith’s College
BY NIKI KOUROFSKY
CLOCKWISE FROM
ABOVE: Chef Kevin
McCarthy guides stu-
dents at this farm-
to-table eatery.international restaurant chain owned,
in part, by Paul Smith’s alum Walter
Ganzi Jr.
In 2005 Ganzi partnered with the col-
lege to open the upscale-dining training
program that would morph into Paul
Smith’s own version of The Palm, a fully
functional on-campus restaurant that
opened to the public in 2013. The name
was changed in 2017 to avoid confusion
with the original swank steak house.
After mastering cheffing fundamen-
tals, culinary arts and service manage-
ment students graduate to The Ganzi,
applying what they’ve learned in real
time. They spend half of the semes-
ter working front-of-house—curating
guests’ dining experiences under the
tutelage of food-and-beverage train-
er Amy Coddington-Burnett—and the
other half rotating through the kitchen’s
work stations.
Today, Brandon Griffin, 20, is han-
dling salads and desserts, from prep-
ping purple daikons and deep frying
chickpea-flour croutons to dishing upDINING
Phot
ographsbyN
ancieBattaglia