People of The Institute       Instructor Profiles         Cara Tannenbaum , Chef-Instructor and Externship Coordinator, Pastry & Baking   Although Cara Tannenbaum's experience in the food industry totals more than 22 years, her connection to pastry goes back even further. Living on a kibbutz in Israel after high school, she recalls watching the older cooks in the kitchen making strudel. "Everything was done from scratch, they would literally even pick the fruit. It was communal, gossipy, and I was fascinated by the old-fashioned methods. I was drawn to the whole process." Returning to the States to attend Antioch College, and later getting a Master's in Anthropology at SUNY Albany, Tannenbaum initially pursued a career as an archaeologist but became disenchanted with the academia. While her husband was teaching at Yale, she took a job at a European-style bakery doing "grunt work"; two years later she had climbed to lead baker. She enrolled in the New York Restaurant School (where she met Nick Malgieri, the Institute's Director of Pastry & Baking) and followed graduation with stints at Orso, the celebrated theater district restaurant, and Woods, a Flatiron district pioneer and one of the first New-American restaurants of the early 1980s. In 1986 Tannenbaum opened her own restaurant, Quarropas, in White Plains, focusing on American food that she describes as "both classic and eclectic." A take-out shop followed; a catering business, which she runs to this day, was next Tannenbaum began teaching Pastry & Baking to the Institute's professional students in 1997. She also acts as the program's Externship Coordinator, a position she finds very rewarding. "It's our students' first step out into the industry, and my goal is to find the right fit for the right student," she says. "As the school grows, our field of placements gets larger and more diverse. It's been very exciting." Tannenbaum lives in White Plains with here husband, a professor at CCNY, and her two children.