On the Job: Eric Larson

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
(217) 244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Eric Larson

JOB: Eric Larson is a pastry chef in the Housing Division. A seven-year employee of the university, Larson began working in restaurants as a teen-ager. While studying business at Loyola University and working in Chicago-area restaurants, Larson decided to obtain a two-year degree in baking and pastry arts from Johnson and Wales University, Providence, R.I., before completing his business degree at Loyola.

What is a typical workday like for you?
You have to roll with the punches. The cooler went down today, and we lost a lot of eggs and other items. A friend of mine in culinary school was a Marine, and he always said, ‘Improvise, adapt, overcome,’ and I believe he was right. The days can be long: It can be a 16-hour day or a regular eight-hour day. Sometimes I can work 14 or 15 days straight without a day off.

Are you baking for the residence halls or where do your products go?
We make desserts for the specialty restaurants in housing. We make breads and sweets for the daily luncheon at the Union. We do a lot of catering for the board of trustees, various departments, alumni, student organizations, weddings and events at the union.

We probably go through a couple hundred pounds of sugar and flour a day. We make about 50 cakes a day, 20 pies and 240 dozen rolls a day. Football season and the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas tends to be a busy season. In the summer, we start doing a lot of weddings through the Illini Union.

What is culinary school like?
Johnson and Wales was the only institution in the country at that time that was offering two-year and four-year degrees in baking and pastry arts. In the pastry courses, you learn how to work with chocolate and make doughs and laminated doughs. You also have regular curriculum courses on how to run restaurants, food costs, starting a restaurant from scratch and computer courses. They consider you’ll be in a management position so there are courses on how to handle people in various situations.

Why pastries?
I’ve always liked sweets. People always remember dessert when they dine at a nicer restaurant. It just makes you feel good because they always remember the pastries. Pastries are more creative. You can’t do as much creative stuff with regular food as you can with pastries. I might consider it to be the best job at the UI. I get to work with sweets and with chocolate and be creative. I get to make cute little pastries, and I get to sample the stuff constantly. I’ve looked at some other positions, and I’ve thought to myself, would I feel fulfilled doing something else? And I don’t think I would.

Are there any particular types of desserts you specialize in?
Anything chocolate. I like making chocolate sculptures. I like being creative with it. I don’t feel creative just making regular cakes and pies. Besides making something taste as good as it can taste, I want to make it look as good as it can look. Lots of people eat with their eyes before they taste it.

Where did you work after culinary school?
Between my first and second years of culinary school, I got a summer job at one of Chicago’s nicest restaurants, Charlie Trotter’s. After I got my culinary degree, I worked for some of the larger restaurant companies, Lettuce Entertain You and Restaurant Development Group, opening restaurants for them. After four or five years, a friend of mine hooked me up with the university because they were looking for a pastry chef, and I came down here.

What kinds of things do you like to do when you’re not working?
I finally purchased a home – a fixer-upper from the 1920s period. It’s small – 1,100 square feet – and I couldn’t imagine owning a bigger house. I and some friends just sanded all the floors and have been painting the rooms and putting up new ceiling fixtures. I’m going to redo all the wiring and the insulation. A friend and I just retiled the bathroom. There’s just project after project for me to do, so I’m still living out of boxes even though I’ve been in the house for six months. The neat thing is the house has all the original kitchen cabinetry from the 1920s, which is what people are putting in now. The house has great character, and that was the reason why I bought it. It was very well maintained; it just needed to be brought up to date.