Culinary School

Back in 1976, when Emeril Lagasse enrolled at Johnson & Wales, he was just a skinny kid who liked to cook, and the young culinary arts school was little more than a riverfront warehouse filled with kitchen equipment left over from the 1964 New York World's Fair. Today, Lagasse is a superstar chef - and Johnson & Wales University is hot, too. As the only culinary school in the United States to combine pastry-making and classic French cuisine with a four-year bachelor of science degree program, it consistently places virtually all its students in jobs within weeks of graduation.

E. Wallis Callahan, 74, one of the fathers of the Philadelphia restaurant renaissance, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer at St. Agnes Medical Center's hospice center. In 1954, Mr. Callahan opened the Coventry Forge Inn in his circa-1717 log-and-stone childhood home on Route 23 in Coventryville, Chester County. In an era of canned food, Wally Callahan was a fresh upstart. Passionate about ingredients, he insisted on buying from the farms in the area south of Pottstown, which nearly a half-century later still is largely bucolic.

Cooking classes - the one-off, loosely structured gatherings of food fans around a chef's counter - have become a form of entertainment in this region. Yes, we watch Food Network, the Cooking Channel, and Bravo. Iron Chef , Good Eats , and Top Chef are immensely popular. "But if you have a question, you can't ask the TV, of course, and you can't taste the food," said Ed Countey, who runs the culinary school for Kitchen Kapers stores. Thus the popularity of live cooking classes at community centers, supermarkets, cooking schools, and even church kitchens.

"AMERICAN IDOL" host Ryan Seacrest will be at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia tomorrow to launch The Voice, a closed-circuit, multimedia center that his charitable foundation has funded. The event is open only to the hospital's patients and their families. The Voice, housed inside the main hospital's Colket Atrium, provides patients the ability to engage in activities related to radio, TV and new media, such as broadcasting like a DJ and playing songs, to watching performances and conducting interviews.

A Philadelphia priest removed from ministry in 1993 after he was accused of abusing a teenage boy went on to teach middle school at the prestigious Haverford School - which never knew of the earlier complaint against him. The priest, Martin J. Satchell, 39, was recently defrocked, the church disclosed Thursday. Until the defrocking, he had been removed from active ministry, but was still officially a priest. Four years after the Philadelphia Archdiocese dismissed him, Satchell was hired to teach history to boys at the Haverford School.

WELCOME TO Philadelphia, a city renowned for its vibrant, seasonally centric dining scene and colorful farmer's markets. You'll find some of the finest dishes on any table here, and confections that rival those served in the patisseries of Paris. Here, too, there is a culinary school geared to producing top-quality cooks as well versed in pastry as they are in producing savory delights. No, we're not talking about Philly's contemporary gastronomic scene, as fabulous as it is. It's Philadelphia of the early 1800s we're invoking - when the city was arguably the best place to wine and dine in the new America.

As its name implies, the Old Mill Inn doesn't shy away from history. It's old with a capital O. From its warrenlike layout of rooms to its surf-and-turf dinners, this 135-seat restaurant will never be mistaken for a cosmopolitan den of culinary fads. The chicken Chesapeake roulade, made with thin slices of rolled chicken breast, is as trendy as it gets. Still, sometimes you need the old standbys. On the appetizer list alone, all the old favorites are here. Jumbo shrimp cocktail, but without the usual red sauce.

CARRIE GARDNER got her teenage son and nephew involved with the nonprofit organization she works for, in hopes that the boys wouldn't end up in jail or dead. So, when her 18-year-old nephew Kharee Tillmon was gunned down at a crowded playground in North Philadelphia early Monday night, blocks from his home, Gardner's pain was that much worse. "I'm sick to my stomach," Gardner, 39, who works with God's Love at Work, said Tuesday at a memorial for her nephew, tears streaming down her face behind dark sunglasses.

For the fourth time in five years, Kenny Chesney has a date to play Lincoln Financial Field. It's a ways out: June 18, as he headlines with Zac Brown Band , and Billy Currington and Uncle Kracker will open. Tickets ($25 to $200) will go on sale Nov. 20 through Ticketmaster and PhiladelphiaEagles.com. Chesney's three previous Linc dates were sellouts. He took a break from the stadium tours this year to cut an album and produce The Boys of Fall , a documentary about high school football.

Along the Black Horse Pike, where the bodies of four women were found earlier this week, the only police activity yesterday was a roadblock - because of flooding. There were no arrests in connection with the killings just outside Atlantic City. No confirmation that the slayings were the work, as some criminologists have opined, of a serial killer. Also still a mystery were the identities of three of the victims, all found facedown in a ditch behind a dismal string of budget motels known for drugs and prostitution.