After three decades in Guilford Technical Community College kitchens, Keith Gardiner is hanging up his apron

“It’s a good gig. I like the students. I like giving back. I like the college. I like having my hands in food,” said Keith Gardiner. “I think the time is right, though."

Keith Gardiner remembers when he came to work in Guilford Technical Community College’s culinary department, staff taught out of a small kitchen shared with a lady who cooked for a daycare. There may have been 40 students in the program at the time.

That was 30 years ago … November 1994 to be exact.

When Gardiner closed the door of his GTCC office for the last time on May 6, he left a program that has grown to several hundred students annually. Staff and students are housed in a 56,000-square-foot building that contains state-of-the-art classrooms, kitchens, and equipment that Gardiner helped design.

“It’s a good gig. I like the students. I like giving back. I like the college. I like having my hands in food,” said the 64-year-old Gardiner. “I think the time is right, though. I want to be able to enjoy my retirement. There are no guarantees in life.”

Chef “G” as his students affectionately call him, took a circuitous professional route to the Piedmont Triad and GTCC. It included stops in Knoxville, Tennessee, working at the 1982 World’s Fair after graduating college, followed by three years at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, California.

He landed a job as a sous chef in Charlotte and a few years later became chef of Perone’s Kitchen and The City Club of Greenville (South Carolina). But with a wife and two young sons, Gardiner decided it was time to leave restaurant kitchens behind.

“I was working 80 hours a week as a chef. I had young sons I wanted to see grow up,” said Gardiner.

He heard of an opening in GTCC’s culinary department, did a phone interview the same night, an in-person interview the next day, and was hired. After serving as a faculty member for several years, Gardiner was named interim department chair and then was appointed permanent department chair, a position he held for almost a decade.

It was during his time as department chair that the new, much larger culinary arts building was constructed. He later returned full time to the classroom as a faculty member.

“I helped along the way; I helped design the program. We (GTCC) were the first accredited culinary program in the state,” said Gardiner. “I’d like to think I helped set the standard. We all played our roles well.”

Gardiner’s instructional philosophy has been simple and direct over the years.

“For the most part, we are hands-on, based on skills and competencies in the kitchen that you need to move on. My cooking classes are nine hours a week, but only an hour is in the classroom. The rest is in the kitchen. We prepare a three-course meal every day.”

Even though he is retiring from GTCC, he has no intentions of slowing down.

“We’re going to do some traveling. I love to ride my bike; I’ve signed up to do a five-day charity ride in August. I’m going to do some triathlons, and I’m going to teach some fitness classes,” said Gardiner, who is also a fitness instructor. He is also president of the Triad Chapter of the American Culinary Federation.

And he’ll probably find time to wander back into a kitchen, even if it is his own.