The Culinary Institute of Charleston

10/12/2026

10/08/2026

Charleston W**e + Food tickets are live! So proud of our alumni who are involved. Go out and support them and our industry partners!

09/29/2026

This will be the third year CIC has supported this event.

09/24/2026

There is no better f&b business education than a student working on an opening team. HTM student Shonice Forrest doing a great FOH job at the soft opening of Angel's Biscuits & Pizza Loves Emily in Avondale. She was able to share her stellar training from her position at Charleston Place.

09/21/2026

There is a version of Italian regional cuisine that can be taught from a recipe. And there is the version that can only be taught by someone who grew up inside the region that produced it. The Culinary Institute of Charleston students learned the second one.

The regional cooking class is not the same experience in every kitchen.

In a domestic setting, students learn the dish — its proportions, its techniques, its flavor profile and regional identity. They leave with a recipe they can reproduce.

Inside the region that produced the dish, with an instructor whose understanding of the food was built from living inside the culture that made it — the class teaches something the recipe alone cannot carry. Why this combination of ingredients exists here and not somewhere else. What the land, the history, and the specific culinary identity of this place produced that no other place would have produced the same way.

The Culinary Institute of Charleston students cooked with ingredients that came from the geography surrounding the school. Under the guidance of an instructor who did not learn this cuisine from a textbook. Inside a kitchen that has been teaching this specific regional tradition to culinary students for years.

They came home with a recipe. More importantly, they came home with the understanding of what the recipe is actually expressing — and that understanding travels into every Italian dish they cook for the rest of their careers.

Our sincere thanks to the Culinary Institute of Charleston — Trident Technical College — for the trust they placed in us to build this experience for their students.

For institutions whose culinary students are ready for this kind of encounter — the planning conversation starts at the link in bio.

09/18/2026

The last dinner in Italy is a different meal than the first. Not because of what is on the table. Because of who is sitting at it.

On the final evening of every program, the students who arrived in Italy as culinary students sit down to dinner as something else entirely.

Not graduates. Not experts. Something quieter and more durable than both — professionals who have stood inside the food systems they will work with for the rest of their careers, and who now understand what those systems actually are at a level their prior education could only gesture toward.

The Culinary Institute of Charleston students received their certificates at the closing dinner of their Italian immersion — a formal acknowledgment of what the program covered, the regions visited, the producers encountered, and the hours spent inside Italian culinary culture rather than reading about it from a comfortable distance.

A certificate from an Italian immersion program is not a credential in the traditional sense. It is a document that marks a specific transformation — the before and after of a culinary education that includes direct, genuine access to the knowledge it claims to teach.

The dinner that accompanies it is the last Italian meal of the program. For most students, it is also the one they will describe most clearly, years later, when someone asks what Italy was actually like.

Not because of what they ate. Because of what they understood, for the first time, while they were eating it.

Congratulations to the Culinary Institute of Charleston — Trident Technical College — and to every student who earned their place at that table.

For institutions ready to give their culinary students this ending — the planning conversation starts at the link in bio.

09/18/2026

Day 16/17 - The doors are closing on the 2026 Study Abroad but they are not locked. Start saving your $$ and you too can experience Italy. PS - hopefully without the 8+ hour flight delay.

09/16/2026

Day 15 - Roma
This group of CIC gladiators push through for the last full day in Italy. First stop a tour of the Coliseum. Just a tad bit older than Charleston's coliseum. Design very similar as the Romans got it right the first time. Parthenon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and more. Our licensed guide Sylvia has degrees in history and archeology, and shared factual and fun information.

09/15/2026

Day 14 - These aren't what we thought of when we heard fine Italian shoes. But they saved us from Buffalo droppings at the farm and dairy producing artisnal mozzarella, ricotta, burrata, smoked mozzarella. The Buffalo are fed 3 times per day, milked twice, and relax in the cooling mist and pool. Philosophy is a happy Buffalo produces happy milk.

09/14/2026

Day 13 - the long, long journey from Ferrara to Nettuno started with the sandman but ended with the Mediterranean sand. And a fresh seafood dinner in a former castle courtyard.