Like most people, I have a deep love for fried chicken. The perfect fried chicken is a wonderful mix of crisp skin and tender meat that, when done right, is incredibly delicious.

When ICE President Rick Smilow and Anne E. McBride wrote "Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food," they discovered a plethora of food jobs they had never heard of before. Since the book's release, they have been discovering even more interesting culinary career paths. DICED shares some of them with you in a reoccurring feature: “Unique Culinary Careers.”

Whether as chefs, cake decorators, specialty food purveyors or caterers, ICE alumni are achieving their goals in a plethora of avenues in the food world. Check out just some of the alumni finding success and making recent headlines.

ICE’s Culinary Management Instructors are seasoned industry professionals who are still active in the industry, working on their own projects while teaching classes at ICE. With such a wide range of experience between them, we decided to ask Julia Heyer and Vin McCann to take a closer look at some of the trends and culinary businesses we keep hearing so much about. Their first post was about NBC’s America’s Next Great Restaurant. Now that the winner of the show has closed his restaurants, they decided to revisit the show.

Hello, August!

Rebecca Blair Roth is a student in ICE’s Hospitality Management Program. Her class is learning about the business of the travel and tourism industry. The program is directed by Tom Voss, whose experience in hotels across the world is invaluable for the students. He is a great teacher and the students are grateful for the opportunity to learn from a true professional.

I’ve been feeling the strawberry love this summer, eating them as much as possible and in every sort of combination, always coming back to my favorite: a big old bowl of greenmarket babies with some real whipped cream.

BlueStar, the manufacturer of professional cooking equipment and the provider of stoves and ovens to ICE’s 12th floor recreational classrooms, recently teamed up with Chef Marcus Samuelsson to benefit the Susan G. Komen for the Cure via its Susan G.