After 30 years on the job, Al Romano will hang up his chef’s coat
Published on: June 16, 2025
It was an end of the era when chef Al Romano hung up his chef’s coat in the Guilford Technical Community College culinary kitchen for the final time on June 1, but the Bronx, New York transplant isn’t really going anywhere.
Chef Romano will be forever tied to GTCC and its culinary program after spending more than 30 years at the college.
“The first day (of retirement), I’m going to do nothing. I’m gonna get up, get a cup of coffee, hang out on the deck, go for a walk, and just chill,” said Romano.
In 1984, Romano was making $5.75 an hour working outside of New York City while also working in the city at landmark restaurants like Tavern on the Green. As much as he loved being a chef in the Big Apple, the business model he faced just didn’t work, with rent consuming much of his salary. He got an opportunity to work on the 1984 Olympic torch run, which opened his eyes to what the rest of the country was like.
A few years later he headed south and eventually landed in the Piedmont Triad and never left. Romano accepted the position as the executive chef at the Danville Regional Medical Center in Danville, Virginia, but he was looking for something different. He wanted a bigger challenge and when the executive chef position came up at Bermuda Run Country Club near Winston-Salem he jumped at it. But it didn’t take long for him to begin the long-running relationship with GTCC.
“I was working at the country club, and I ran into a friend that was a department chair at GTCC. He asked if I ever thought about teaching and I said, ‘never.’ He said I’d be a good culinary instructor,” remembers Romano.
That conversation led to an adjunct instructor position at the college. A few years later, in 2002, he became a full-time instructor and retired as an instructor/professor of culinary arts and hospitality this June.
The culinary program at GTCC has grown and morphed with technological and societal changes over the years. During the craze of television cooking shows, Romano said enrollment in the program grew to 500. When COVID -19 hit, it temporarily became an online and tele-culinary program. Romano was able to use his years as a guest TV chef in the local media market to redesign classes to fit the need. For his unique efforts during COVID-19, Romano was awarded GTCC’s Teaching Innovation Award by the board of trustees in 2020.
“COVID made a big impact on a lot of things,” said Romano. “There was a lot less in-person interaction with students, so I tried to find creative ways to make them have interactions.”
Except for the one day of coffee on the back porch, Romano doesn’t plan on shifting to a lower gear once retirement begins.
“I want to ride my motorcycle as long as I can and I’ll continue to work out. You have to be in decent shape to hold up a 900-pound bike,” said Romano. “I plan on doing a lot of volunteering and giving back. I want to help where my talents can be used and have fun doing it.”
There will still be some teaching in Romano’s future, too. Next year, he hopes to be back at GTCC teaching a class every now and then. Over the years he’s enjoyed his time representing the college on local TV and thanks to those experiences, he has plans to gain a little more camera time.
“I’m really proud of what I’ve done my entire career,” said Romano. “Teaching has been my second career. I plan on a third. Maybe I’ll do some acting or something like that. I might go in that direction.”
While he’s excited about retirement, he’s proud of the past.
“You have to enjoy it; you have to love it,” Romano said of his years as a professor. “I always say it’s better than a real job.”
“We have a great team here. The people I work with, we pick on each other. We are like family, but we’ve had a great time teaching together. And the passion of the students, I’ll miss that most.”
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