Facilities and Equipment
Culinary arts and sciences research and menu R&D initiatives at the CIA are supported by the college’s world-renowned faculty and facilities at its Hyde Park, NY; St. Helena, CA; and San Antonio, TX campuses. The CIA’s professionally equipped kitchens, restaurants, and research facilities offer an ideal environment for collaboration, education, and innovation.
Kitchens, Classrooms, and Restaurants
Lying at the heart of the CIA educational experience—and its research initiatives—are the college’s kitchens, classrooms, and restaurants. Lecture halls, classrooms, and demo theaters serve as the backdrop for lively and engaging ideation sessions and conference breakout discussions. Professional teaching kitchens are where prototypes developed in these sessions are brought to life. And the CIA’s on-campus public restaurants, Courtside Café, and student dining halls provide convenient, real-world consumer behavior labs for testing research hypotheses.
Culinary Science Lab
Located in the J. Willard Marriott Education Center, the culinary science lab is the hub of Department of Menu R&D activities at the Hyde Park campus. Doubling as a sensory analysis facility, the lab is outfitted with a variety of culinary science equipment, including analytical scales, pH meters, refractometers, a pressure cooker, a dehydrator, thermocirculators, thermocouples, a desiccator, and a vacuum pump.
Ventura Foods Center for Menu Research and Development
The Ventura Food Center for Menu Research and Development at the CIA at Greystone provides the perfect setting for foodservice education, product and process development, conferences, and research in culinary science and technology. The Center contains:
- Classrooms and ideation suites that help bring together experts in ingredients and cuisine, marketing and consumer behavior, restaurant operations, and food science to develop sustainable R&D strategies.
- A theater-style kitchen equipped with temperature-control cabinets for accelerated and long-term storage stability studies. The kitchen can be used for cooking demonstrations, prototype testing, new media projects, and the development of marketing materials. We can conduct traditional sensory testing to evaluate flavors and preference, or we can train and conduct descriptive panels with expert judges.
- A conference center featuring the latest audio-visual equipment to support large and small conferences.
Williams Center for Flavor Discovery
The Williams Center for Flavor Discovery at Greystone serves as a restaurant-laboratory where chefs, operators, suppliers, consumers, and sensory scientists converge to focus and analyze flavor in a real-world setting.
The Center’s dining room is equipped with audience response technologies and the kitchen includes sous-vide capabilities, an extensive spice library, and a video camera interface for recording, reviewing, and optimizing preparation strategies. Ideal for focus groups, ideation sessions, consumer behavior studies, and team-building exercises, the facility can be adapted to emulate your restaurant concept, creating a customizable research and learning environment.
Campus Gardens
Herb, fruit, and vegetable gardens at the Greystone and Hyde Park campuses overflow with fresh, local flavors to inspire creativity and healthy menu concepts. The edible landscape also serves as an important element in building a foundation of knowledge in agricultural sustainability among CIA students.
