Taste
The kitchen becomes a classroom

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Chuck Furuya spotted a chef in whites and a farmer in T-shirt and slippers lugging a plastic basket full of live prawns, sharing the weight between them.

Chef George Mavrothalassitis checks hanging orders at The Pearl restaurant while students follow along. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"This" was a farm-to-table dinner at LCC's The Pearl restaurant a week ago, staffed by food service students and a mentor team one onlooker called a "who's who of the restaurant business": Mark Shishido of Alan Wong's Pineapple Room, Ivy Nagayama of Sensei, Duane Kawamoto of L'Uraku, Gary Manago of the Hilton Hawaiian Village and a dozen others whose names may not be widely known, but who keep the fronts of their houses moving smoothly night after night.

12:45 p.m. — Chef Mavro swipes a finger through a whirring blender full of pinot noir sauce. "Don't do that," he tells the students ringed around him. "Always use a spoon. I'm the only one that can do that."

Though not a graded exercise, the dinners are a sort of hands-on mid-term. Everyone in the four-semester program gets involved. Last week, a first-semester team — "just 8 weeks old," as program coordinator Fern Tomisato said — cooked alongside chefs George "Mavro" Mavrothalassitis of Chef Mavro and Eric Leterc of Pacific Beach Hotel.

	The Pearl Dining Room
•	Where: Leeward Community College
•	Hours: 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. weekdays during the semester; plus once-a-semester fine-dining dinners
•	Reservations: 455-0475

Both chefs are highly experienced, both came up through the exacting French apprenticeship system (which means starting at the bottom and working like crazy until somebody gives you a break), both are sticklers for detail. And both gave up an entire workday to help.

1:30 p.m. — Second-semester student Amanda Pendengo, who will work the evening's dinner as a waiter's helper, first has to complete her day's schoolwork, washing and trimming lettuce for the next day's cafeteria menu. "I'd like own something someday," she says, "but not until I have the skills to do it." She, like many of the students, will cheerfully put in a 12-hour day.

The American style of culinary education — which at LCC involves two years of primarily hands-on training — is usually less exacting than the French. But Wednesday's command performance was a taste of the Old World way. The students reveled in it, despite some butterflies and bumps.

2 p.m. — Chef-instructor Patrick Uchima, who hired Leeward students when he was at the Hawaiian Waikiki Beach Hotel, is cleaning watercress. The chef-instructors don't mind the extra work, he says: "That's what this is about, to expose the students to chefs in the industry; then they get jobs." (Indeed, one student is offered a job that night.)

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"This is excellent," said Nolan Nohara, a third-semester student and Pearl City High School graduate who came to LCC from a pizza restaurant where he found himself chopping mushrooms with no idea how to do it correctly. "I felt like I might as well come to school and learn to do it right."

Nohara's first customer that night was the school's provost (president). He was literally sweating it. But Nohara's mentor, Rainer Kumbroch, operations manager of Roy's Restaurants Hawai'i, shared his own first-ever waiting experience: Someone didn't show up and Kumbroch was promoted from busboy to waiter on the spot. His first customer? Jack Lord in his super-celebrity prime. Scary.

2:45 p.m. — Pacific Beach Hotel pastry chef Ronald Viloria decides the chocolate basil cake the students made needs prettying up — a chocolate collar, some caramel garnish. He and chef-instructor Rodman Machado rush their team into action. "It's supposed to be a learning experience," Viloria says, unperturbed by the short window in which to fix 100 desserts.

Stanley Ikei has been a chef-instructor at Leeward for several decades. For him, every recipe is a lesson plan.

When he shows his Cooking Principles class how to make French bread, he said, "the object is not to make bread, it's to teach" weighing and measuring, use of the mixer, the food chemistry of proofing yeast, the math of portioning and the science of baking.

"They can read about it and tell what it is, but until you actually see it and do it, you don't understand," he said.

3:10 p.m. — Mavro's cell phone rings; it's Brent Burkott of Hawai'i Farm-Fresh Seafood, delivering the prawns for the first course; they've traveled from Kahuku, alive, in a tank in his truck. As he turns the live prawns into a huge vat of boiling vegetable stock, Mavro tells the students that if anyone complains about the freshness of the prawns that night, "I kill them!"

The need for hands-on experience is exactly why Furuya devised the idea of the once-a-semester dinners (a steal at four courses, with matched wines, for $55 per person). The two previous dinners involved contemporary Hawaiian cuisine with Alan Wong and Randal Ishizu and contemporary Japanese cuisine with Roy Yamaguchi and Hiroshi Fukui. The next event, Nov. 24 at O'ahu Country Club, will be a real test: a few advanced students have been hand-picked and paired with mentors and will devise their own recipes and captain their own teams to prepare the meal.

Student Jeff Lamb puts the finishing touches on chef Eric Leterc's grilled shutome Nicoise-style with fingerling potato ragout before it is served at Leeward Community College's The Pearl restaurant. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

4 p.m. — Student waiter Nolan Nohara is getting a crash course in service from one of Hawai'i's best, Rainer Kumbroch, operations manager for Roy's Restaurants here: "The most important person in this restaurant is not the chef, not the manager, not the guy who owns it. It's the guy who's paying the bill."

Though it's 30 years old, Leeward Community College's culinary training program isn't well known; Kapi'olani Community College tends to get the publicity, and the students. But the LCC program's board, mainly food professionals who know intimately the need for well-trained help, is trying to change that, said Tomisato. "They believe this kind of training is so critical that they want to make sure this program survives," she said.

Amanda Pendengo's reasons for choosing LCC illustrate the need. A Navy wife and mother who has to fit her studies around an already busy life, she said LCC's classes were relatively easy to get into, the class size was smaller than at KCC and she didn't have to commute as far.

5 p.m. — The kitchen is papered with Post-It notes, masking tape, notices. "No Slacking Allowed," says a sign. A dozen or so Post-It notes on one wall show the reservation time, number of guests and table number of every group expected during the evening. Another list ticks off the number of guests each hour: 22 reservations for 5:30, 11 for 5:45 ...

Though hints and tips flow through the day, more subtle lessons are being taught: Patience, as they watch chef Mavro wait for the prawns to rise in the boiling stock, a sign that the crustaceans are done. The importance of little details, as they listen to Tom Alejado of Sensei discuss everything from posture to tone of voice when serving a table. Respect, as they hear chef-instructors formally addressing the visiting pros as "Chef" and see them scurry to do the guest's bidding.

Third-semester student Nolan Nohara served as waiter for the special dinner, mentored by Rainer Kumbroch of Roy's. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

5:40 p.m. — "Get in your stations. Stations, please," shouts chef-instructor Rodman Machado."Firing two!" he barks, meaning the first two hors d' oeuvres should be on the grill.

Twenty-year-old Geoff Yoshida, an Iolani graduate who learned to cook from his father, Marvin, spent much of the day looking open-mouth over the shoulder of a new mentor in Mavrothalassitis. Yoshida was a biology major at the University of Puget Sound when he decided to come home and try culinary school. He plans to transfer to a school in Portland, Ore., where his girlfriend lives. "I've been working in catering but it's easier to get a good job with the degree," he said.

6 p.m. — Chef Eric Leterc quietly instructs student Jeff Lamb in the right way to deposit food into a saute pan of hot oil. A minute later, he tells Lamb: "If you stir it too much, it gets mushy." He reaches into the pan to pluck out a slice of cream-colored potato. "Always, you taste. The more you taste, the more you know."

Everyone learns from these occasions, said Tomisato, including the program's five faculty, who get a sense of new trends and procedures in the field.

And, she said frankly, the college can't often afford to work with expensive ingredients such as the ones being used in this dinner; Brent Burkott's prawns were donated, as was the Kamuela Pride beef of Rick and Jessica Habein.

Save the best for last: chocolate basil cake with caramel garnish. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

6:25 p.m. — Mavro, notoriously picky, has finally relinquished his place on the appetizer line. Student Sheldon Simeon seasons the tabbouleh mixture. But just as he's about to pass it on for plating, Mavro steps in to spoon up a bite. The line stops and nobody breathes for a second until, smiling, he gives a thumbs up. Simeon blushes and his classmates cheer.

Furuya emphasizes that the aim is to complement LCC's program. "Not to second-guess anything your chef-instructors are doing," he said, "but we want to give you an opportunity to meet some of the best in the field."

6:35 — The first two desserts go out; 41 first courses have been served, nearly halfway through the night's reservations.

In the kitchen, runner Warren "Stitch" Masuda of Roy's Hawai'i Kai is an aloha-shirted blur, the conduit through which orders reach each team preparing the courses in different parts of the kitchen. The temperature is well into the sub-tropical range, wilting the students' whites. Fukuya considers Masuda the best anywhere; he has the manner of a no-nonsense traffic cop and keeps the plates moving. "Ho!," one student says, "da guy can moooove."

7:20 p.m. — The last diners, a table of 10, are seated. The waiters perform flawlessly. Conversation flows. Furuya comes by to describe the wines. It is as Kumbroch said it should be: "All we're doing is entertaining our guests. And when we do it right, they'll have fun and leave happy."