New London high school students serve up restaurant-quality meals with a heaping dash of culture
Oct. 13—NEW LONDON — Months of kitchen instruction, from basic knifework to advanced food preparation, was condensed into 90 intense minutes inside the New London Multi-Magnet High School's Whaler Café on Thursday.
For that hour-and-a-half, the stainless steel kitchen grill, salad and dessert stations served as a proving ground for 15 young culinary students ladling up portions of house-made penne with roasted red pepper coulis alongside bowls of zuppa Toscana and slices of apple strudel a la mode to a discerning group of patrons ― district staffers.
The special lunch service was one of several such food events hosted each school year by students enrolled in an International Education Pathway program that seasons its curriculum with a healthy dash of culture.
Seated in the center of the action, senior Ava Salecedo collected take-out slips and payments before relaying orders to a cadre of student chefs. The 17-year-old, already accepted to the Culinary Institute of America, was the shift's sous chef, or secondary commander.
"I jump around a lot from station to station checking on things," she said, as secretaries and other school staffers exchanged cash for platters of grilled chicken Caesar salad. "This is a phenomenal program where we get a chance to cook and serve foods from different cultures to people who may never have had them."
That might mean stirring up pans of paella, boiling up a gumbo or building a plate of gyros.
For Chef Tomm Johnson, one of the program's two instructors along with Ben Young, food and culture are as tightly woven as a loaf of braid bread. In a side room near the newly refurbished kitchens, Johnson pointed to a wall collage of past café meals that featured fat bratwurst, chunky mofungo and delicate bao buns.
"Next semester, we'll focus on U.S. regional cuisines and explain the origins of those foods including how they may have come to New England or the southwest and changed over the years," he said. "I'll also be having several international chefs, some of them from Michelin-rated restaurants, demonstrating recipes through Zoom classes that students can watch and cook along with at the same time."
Johnson said the culinary program allows students the rare chance to observe the intersection between food and culture in a practical way.
"For instance, when we were preparing for our Hispanic Heritage Month service, we brought down students from the school's Spanish classes to help with the paella," he said.
Thursday's meal service was a group effort split between two blocks of more experienced students. The first group spent time on Wednesday prepping the meals. Thursday's chefs finished the cooking and plating duties.
At a dessert station, 16-year-old Klayphond Jean and his colleagues chopped rolls of strudel into individual servings before dusting them with cinnamon and popping them into an oven. The warmed pastry was given a final coating of powdered sugar and topped with a dollop of ice cream.
"It's a lot more work than I thought," Jean said. "I've been cooking at home since middle school and spaghetti is my best dish because of the epis, or Haitian spice, I use."
Jean, who plans to pursue a college sports scholarship, said offering patrons dishes they've never tried is especially enjoyable.
"You want to give people the chance to try new flavors," he said.
That cultural emphasis extends beyond the staff meals, said Janet Farquhar, the school's magnet pathways program director. She said the student cafeteria, run by the Brigaid group, puts a premium on nutrition and diverse options.
"The majority of the food is locally sourced, made from scratch and tailored to the different ethnicities of our students," she said. "Students want to eat the food and, for some, it's the only real meal they can count on in a day."
Johnson, who spent years cooking in a variety of far-flung locales before embarking on a teaching career, keeps the café's standards high.
"If something's not right, I'll send it back," he said. "We tell the students to taste everything, from sauces to croutons, even if another student prepped it. And if it's not perfect, it doesn't get served."
