In student competition, culinary futures are on the line
In some ways it was like an "Iron Chef" competition, with everyone racing against the clock to plate the food, a panel of judges, a breathless, hungry audience, and then someone pulling out all the stops and dazzling the crowd with gnocchi in the 11th hour.
But in many other ways, the Future Chefs competition was nothing like the television program. These 16 nervous high school seniors, from culinary programs around the area, are an ethnically diverse, under-resourced group who are in it for scholarships and job opportunities.
Everyone who got this far in the program will be awarded something - money for culinary school, a job in one of Boston's kitchens, or both. Chefs from Icarus, Myers+Chang, and Temple Bar roamed the kitchens, part judge and part cheerleader, asking questions (was a strawberry cut on a board that had been used for chicken or garlic?) and then offering comfort (after the competition, one young contestant learned that her apartment had been robbed while she was out).
The Future Chefs program is the brainchild of Toni Elka, a former art student who approaches the endeavor with lots of outside-the-box thinking and a huge reality check. Elka once ran the program on money from the Anthony Spinazzola Foundation, but when the foundation shut its doors last year, the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation came forward with a grant of $250,000.
Following last month's competition, the Future Chefs held their annual awards ceremony. A graduate of last year's program presented restaurateur Chris Douglass with the first Salt of the Earth Award for his dedication to the program and for making Boston "a funner and yummier city," as Elka describes it. Douglass, owner of Icarus and Ashmont Grill, has been with the program since it was launched in 2007, and has hired many of its graduates. Presenter Erik Powers, 19, was one hire. Powers works at Ashmont Grill and goes to Bunker Hill Community College with a scholarship from the organization.
Elka knows the hardships that students face - from citizenship issues to having kids of their own. She guides students in the "soft skills" they might need, such as how to be savvy consumers of student loans and which jobs are stepping stones and which are dead ends. "It's really what high school should be, but it's not," says Elka.
Juan Pedrosa, 20, competed in the Future Chefs competition two years ago, and won a scholarship to the New England Culinary Institute in Essex, Vt. When he competed, Tom Berry of Temple Bar was there, and was impressed enough to give Pedrosa his card and encourage him to call when he was finished with school. Now Pedrosa works at Temple Bar.
At this event, Pedrosa is spending the day volunteering; like many others, his day will end after the Temple Bar kitchen closes late on Friday night. "I love what Future Chefs is now," says Pedrosa. "It's more us, not corporate people talking about what to do with all this money."
For the final competition, students were given the same menu - chicken Provencal for the entree - and identical ingredients. The dessert used tuiles, or tile-shaped cookies, and pastry cream. Karla Figueroa, 19, a senior at Everett High, shaped her cookies into a fanciful dome topped with a butterfly. She won first place for dessert presentation and second place for entree. Last week Figueroa was awarded a pastry certificate scholarship to Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.
Elka also acts as a coach to the students. She's there to counsel them, but also to help teach them about the joys of life in a restaurant kitchen, like the cacophonous sound of an industrial dishwasher on stainless steel, or everyone working as a team when the place is slammed.
Before he discovered the kitchen, Powers, the Bunker Hill student, was studying to become an electrician and interested only in finding a class that "didn't give any homework." But he discovered that he loved cooking. "You can always grow, no matter how good you are. Before, I never knew how much went into it. That steak might just be a steak to you," he says, describing an entree he's just sent out of the kitchen. "But to me it's like producing a movie or like putting on a play."
Judges, Douglass among them, tasted dishes for the doneness of the poultry, the seasoning of the sauce, the tenderness of the vegetables. They also commented on the young chefs' creativity. The professionals included Alison Hearn of Myers+Chang; Kevin Crawley of Coriander; Berry from Temple Bar; Brigid Flanigan, a culinary instructor at Southern New Hampshire University; and Julia Shanks of Interactive Cuisine.
As for Sean Showalter, the Somerville High School senior who made pillowy gnocchi from potato and flour after a disappointing mashed potato experiment, he says simply, "Everything else just seemed so plain."
And this, of course, is what pleases Elka.
"I love subverting the outcomes expected for these kids," she says.
