People of The Institute       Alumni Profiles         Shirl Gard, Culinary Arts '92   Shirl Gard, executive pastry chef at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox, Massachusetts, knows that when you begin a second career, you must be willing to start again from scratch. A former fashion merchandiser who had worked her way to the top of her field, she left that life to follow her passion for cooking At ICE®, Gard was enrolled in the culinary arts program. When she hit the pastry section, she realized she had found her niche. Overall, Gard finds that her culinary training gives her a great advantage in the pastry kitchen, where she constantly uses the knife skills and sauce-making techniques she acquired at ICE®." After graduating from ICE® in 1992, Gard and her husband moved to western Massachusetts. They sampled every restaurant in the area and decided that the Wheatleigh Hotel had the finest food. She was hired on as a prep cook and worked in different areas of the hotel's kitchen until finally the assistant pastry chef position opened up. After 4 years as assistant, Gard became the hotel's executive pastry chef in 1998 Nestled into the rolling Berskshire Mountains, the Wheatleigh is a luxury European-style hotel that features a formal dining room and a more casual eat-in library. Executive Chef Peter Platt blends new American cuisine with a solid grounding in French technique, and Gard creates pastries in the same vein. During the past year, the restaurant at Wheatleigh has been profiled in both Wine Spectator and The New York Times Magazine Gard recalls wise lessons learned from the late Peter Kump, the founder of ICE®. "He was always stressing the importance of reading about the history of food and cooking," Gard said. At the completion of her program, she prepared a meal that was eaten and graded by Kump and Paul Grimes, who both commented that she still had to learn to balance salt and acid. "Looking back, this rings a bell for me, but at the time it didn't," Gard says. "The more you taste, the more you develop your palate."