Nine of Strawberry Crest High School’s top chefs took a two-day trip to Orlando last week to slice and dice statewide competition.
But, this isn’t some typical home economics coursework: This was serious, five-star business.
The Chargers competed against 62 other schools March 4 and 5, in the ProStart Culinary Team Competition, an event sponsored by Johnson & Wales University.
The competition’s recipe called for to two timed portions: the culinary competition, during which the cooking magic happened, and the waiter’s relay. Crest placed 13th in the culinary event and 25th in the relay.
In the culinary competition, teams of five chefs prepared a three-course meal for a panel of judges. In addition to that, they also were judged on their knife-handling skills. Competitors were asked to break down an entire chicken into eight pieces, using four knife cuts of their own choosing. The chefs were judged not only on the quality of their food but also on their communication and leadership skills, proper use of sanitation procedures and the degree of difficulty.
The waiter’s relay saw teams of four operate as a real waitstaff, doing the best work they could in the shortest possible time.
If their teacher, Paul Bonanno, considers the Chargers’ work to have been a five-star meal, there’s a good chance it was. Before arriving at Strawberry Crest in January 2013, he was the executive chef at Bernini, in Ybor City. Crest’s previous chef, program founder Ken Melton, was actually one of Bonanno’s former employees.
“(Melton) left to open his own restaurant in Riverview, and he gave me the heads-up about this job when he left,” Bonanno says.
Bonanno now oversees a program with about 125 students, teaching Culinary 1-4 and Hospitality and Specialties. The goal is to make it easy for all students to enter the restaurant business and thrive there.
“Obviously, we want them to go to college first, but we want them to be able to walk into any professional restaurant and get a job,” Bonanno says.
He picked nine of his standouts — chefs Bailie McEntire, Bryan Laycock, Adrian Morales, Jamil Naranjo and Brooke Simone; and waiters Will Lewis, Travis Searfoss, Olivia Houghtalin and JoLynn Smith — for the ProStart competitions. They likely will be back in action in other competitions. Although the recent competition is arguably the state’s largest, the FCCLA hosts two or three others each year.
Although the team didn’t finish as high as it had hoped, Bonanno and the Chargers are proud of their work.
“We didn’t make the top five, but the students still produced a five-star meal, in my book,” he says.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
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We won’t blame you if your mouth starts watering once you read about the meal that Strawberry Crest’s team prepared. Unlike most of their peers, these kids can go way beyond cooking mac-and-cheese in the microwave.
The Chargers started things off with a butter-poached shrimp and scallop salad, then went big for the main course. They served pan-seared duck breast, with caramelized sweet potatoes, pancetta, seared asparagus and black grape agrodulce (Italian for “sweet and sour”). Dessert was a concoction dubbed “Crepe Neapolitan,” which was a chocolate crepe with strawberry cream cheese filling, vanilla yogurt sauce and crushed pistachios.