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# Culinary students need seasoning
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/culinary-students-need-seasoning/
- Published: 2008-08-07T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:33:56.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Ocean Park, #archive-import

*By Amanda Cushman Real Simple Food*

THERE IS A SMALL, LESSER KNOWN eating establishment in Santa Monica at the Art Institute on Ocean Park Boulevard and 31st Street. They have a culinary program that hosts a restaurant named Bistro 31\. I have heard of the place for years but due to their very limited schedule — I think they are only open regularly in the summer — I had never been able to check it out.

Well, the other day I took a friend there for lunch and must say was not overly impressed.

The place is charming and filled with light, the service attentive and eager to please. The students are in training so they are the ones cooking, serving and clearing the tables. There is a manager who was clearly in charge that came over to check on things so they are supervised, but the woman who waited on us was a little unsure of what the items on the menu were and which item looked like what.

I mention this because my guest ordered an entrée which she delivered and we both saw it was an appetizer but she was convinced we were wrong. After a brief discussion we had it whisked away thereupon the manager came by to smooth things over. He gave us the appetizer gratis as the entrée would now take another 10 minutes.

All that aside, I enjoyed my appetizer which was described as a tuna tataki roll. It came cut into small cylinders wrapped in thin slices of cucumber with some sort of sauce decorating the plate. It was lovely although a bit light on the tuna for my taste and there was a strange choice of garnish, a few fried wonton strips, something that did-n’t quite go with the delicate texture of the rolls. My friend ordered a salad that they described as thinly sliced squash with vinaigrette. It was Chayote which is a squash that one rarely sees in restaurants that was drizzled with dressing and was delicious.

For my entrée I had a chicken Caesar that was OK, a bit odd as they chose to serve the chicken on the edge of the plate in a pile so it wasn’t dressed or tossed in with the salad which gave it little flavor. It seemed like quite a small portion for an entrée salad and I did-n’t think it was very good. After the mix-up with my friends’ entrée arriving as an appetizer we both shared it — a thinly sliced serving of salmon carpaccio which was very well seasoned. When his entrée did arrive it was baked salmon served with mashed potatoes and garnished with a round of fried wonton skins and filled with some small mixture of herbs, it looked nice but it had already garnished my appetizer and his mistake appetizer so I thought it could have been something else. His salmon was slightly overcooked and seemed a little bland.

I enjoyed sitting in the light filled dining room but I would say the food needs some re-working.

I think a great Caesar salad is a winning dish so here is my version which I believe to be better than most restaurants.

AMANDA CUSHMAN is a culinary educator who has cooked professionally for 25 years. She teaches privately for groups of two to 20 students. She has developed hundreds of recipes for cookbooks as well as food magazines and Web sites. She

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 7, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080708.pdf?ref=smdp.com)