The Culinary Institute of America

This campus provides a great culinary variety with American, French, and Italian options. We chose the American restaurant and were generally satisfied. While our new waiter struggled slightly with the menu, he got the job done. The entrées were excellent, though serving all coffee and cappuccino cold was a noticeable misstep. Overall, it was a nice departure from the usual dining options, and we plan to return in the spring to see more of the campus.

This post is mainly for any prospective student. I took my son here for an open house and it was fantastic. The campus itself is absolutely beautiful and the school had so much to offer!!! I see why it’s the I.V League school for culinary!!!! My son looks forward to coming here next year in the fall and I feel very confident as a parent sending him here.

I'm reviewing this from a tourist's perspective, not a student or prospective student. This is by all means a hidden gen that the Hudson River has to offer. Everything about this place spells a natural charm. The campus is so beautiful, both the architecture and the natural scenery. It's also very visitor friendly. I visited on a Sunday, so the restaurants weren't open. If you can make it to the restarantus, by all means try them out. The "Egg", which is CIA's student center, has a dining hall, which was open. The food is very good! Visitor parking is right underneath the main building, which is also open to the public for tours. Make sure you go into some of the classrooms and look outside the window--trust me, it's the best view of the Hudson I'd ever seen. Sharing some photos I took while I was there.

We recently visited the American Bounty restaurant. Overall, we enjoyed the evening, the atmosphere, the students and the experience, but the food...not so much! We started off we a delicious taste of tomato pesto gazpacho and some appetizers. The gazpacho and the blistered shishito peppers were the best things we ate all night. The charcuterie board was horrible, very smokey meat and people who love pâté, did not care for the pâté, and the bread on the board was hard and not good. The rolls was very good, but too much salt on top.

The chicken was very salty and the two people who ordered it, didn't care for it. A few people ordered the duck and didn't care for it. A few of us ordered steak. The steak was tasty, but very tough and the plantains were hard and needed sauce or something. The two meals people enjoyed most were the lamb and the pork chop. We ordered apple crisp for dessert. The ice cream was delicious, but the apple crisp was terrible. It tasted like cloves and allspice. How do you mess up apple crisp? We had hoped to be wowed by our culinary experience. It is a beautiful school and it was an enjoyable evening, but the food was very disappointing.

We had a wonderful four course meal with wine pairings last night at CAI. What a great experience. We learned all about the highly regarded 18 month program. The servers, hosts, chefs all are in their final class pulling together to run this restaurant. It was lovely! Loved meeting our waiter Thomas and hearing about his path. We could select from three or four course menu with selections in each category and of course, wine pairings were optional. We selected 4 courses with pairings. Everything was delicious and when we couldn’t decide we shared. They were very accommodating. Since it was our anniversary, they welcomed us with a lovely glass of champagne the chocolate dense mouse with roasted pepitos and sunflower seeds was to die for! Best ever as a chocolate lover. And finally, we ended with a stroll in the gorgeous main lobby of this historic stone building. There is an extensive display of- museum quality - of wine openers through the centuries. The building is beautifully lite at night making picture taking very difficult. During the day, there is a cafe in the main building for the public - I couldn’t understand if it temporary closed. Anyway, well worth a dinner reservation at the restaurant and stroll into a gorgeous building - history in time. Enjoy. PS We already made reservations to return in a couple of months for a friends’s 60th bday.