PUHI — Kapa‘a High School culinary students were given a unique career-shadowing experience as they were allowed to shadow Kaua‘i Community College culinary-arts students in the fine-dining program yesterday. High-schoolers Winston Ouye, Billy Iloreta and Kyle Shimizu were on hand
PUHI — Kapa‘a High School culinary students were given a unique career-shadowing experience as they were allowed to shadow Kaua‘i Community College culinary-arts students in the fine-dining program yesterday.
High-schoolers Winston Ouye, Billy Iloreta and Kyle Shimizu were on hand Wednesday morning, immersed in a va-riety of culinary experiences under the tutelage and guidance of KCC students who were striving to prepare dishes in time for the opening of the dining pro-gram that offers lunch.
Ouye said that their short visit was a busy one, since the trio had already cleaned apples for the fine-dining des-sert, rolled dough, stirred chocolate, and filled pies.
Beyond that, to open their experi-ence, the trio was pressed into service working with the chocolate icing to cre-ate a dessert component before moving off into other sections of the kitchen and cafeteria, where they worked on creating salads for the fine-dining lun-cheon that was sold out for that day.
Time management was critical, as the students were part of the hustle and activity as KCC students rushed to fin-ish their dishes in time for the presenta-tion phase of fine dining.
Students from the front end were united with the kitchen staff, who “pre-sented” their respective dishes so the wait help could properly describe the offerings to diners.
The hands-on, career-shadowing is really good for the students, KCC instructor Billy Gibson said while work-ing with some of the culinary-arts stu-dents.
“They come from Shirley French’s culinary class,” Gibson said of the Kapa‘a students. “And, we’ll have an-other group for the Thursday program. There were other students here on Tuesday as well.”
Gibson noted that college leaders fully support the high schools’ culinary programs by offering these types of experiences for the students.
Additionally, Gibson noted that leaders of the Culinary Academy at Waimea High School will be having their students help at the upcoming American Culinary Federation (ACF) brunch at KCC on Sunday, Feb. 20.
Following that event, Gibson said KCC officials will visit Waimea High School on Wednesday, Feb. 23, for the Westside school’s annual Career Day. Gibson noted that KCC students will be at the school preparing sushi as part of their demonstration.
Kaua‘i High School graduates now part of the KCC culinary-arts program will have an opportunity to visit their alma mater and be part of the demonstrations there for the Red Raiders’ Career Day coming up on Friday, Feb. 4.
“They are really proud to be able to do this,” Gibson said.
For the Kaua‘i High School visit, Gibson said the culinary students will be making cookies, and inviting the high-school stu-dents to become part of the program by decorating the cookies with icing.
Gibson noted that Kaua‘i High School leaders wanted some of their travel and tourism students to visit the Puhi campus for some career-shadowing experiences. But, unfortunately, the school’s no-travel policy prevented the students’ visit to the campus.
For the budding Kapa‘a chefs, Ouye was busy moving trays of dessert dough into the storage area, stopping briefly to note, “This was good. I really want to get into this program.”
The KCC fine dining lunch is held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, started Jan. 19, and will run through Thursday, Feb. 24.
Following a short break, the final mod-ule will be presented starting Mar. 15, and running through Apr. 21.
For more information or reservations for the fine-dining program, people may call the KCC dining room at 245-8243.
Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@pulitzer.net.
