Posted on: Friday, June 28, 2002

Deaf student chef focuses on job

By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor

KAHULUI, Maui — In the organized chaos of a restaurant kitchen, chef-in-training Ismael Portillo says the fact he is deaf could be an advantage.

"I work hard focusing on my job — less talk," he wrote in response to a reporter's note asking him about the difficulty he may face in trying to find work once he completes his culinary arts studies at Maui Community College.

Portillo, 19, apparently hasn't had much trouble getting along at the Kahului campus, where he is an A-student. He was the winner of HMSA's 5-A-Day Recipe Cook-off for student chefs held last month at Kapi'olani Community College, and he will be preparing 13,000 servings of his winning recipe for honey-baked salmon with ginger and fruit relish at this weekend's Taste of Honolulu event.

Portillo, who grew up in the Los Angeles area, was 4 years old when he was stricken with meningitis and lost his hearing. Nonetheless, he attended public school and played middle guard for his high school football team.

Even as a child, Portillo enjoyed concocting his own recipes. In the 10th grade, he worked in a hotel kitchen, and shortly thereafter moved to Hawai'i.

Soon after arriving on Maui, Portillo met local radio personality Henry "Boy" Kanae at the beach. Kanae, who had learned sign language as a former social worker, took an interest in the young man. Six months later, Kanae and his late wife, Sharon, took in Portillo as a hanai son, and he moved out of the MCC dorm to live with them.

A state-supplied sign language interpreter accompanies Portillo to class at the community college. He said he long ago learned how to adapt to a school environment, but did have some minor difficulty in the kitchen. One problem, he said, was "getting to learn the new names of the tools I had used but never knew what they were called."

"English is like my second language and sign language is my first language," he said. "But I have faced most of these difficulties and learned to handle it since high school."

After finishing at MCC, Portillo said he wants to visit other countries to learn about their cuisines, and eventually open his own restaurant.

MCC culinary arts instructor Elaine Rothermel, former chef at Simply Healthy Cafe in Wailuku, helped the student develop his recipe for the HMSA contest and will be at his side at the HMSA/Culinary Institute of the Pacific food booth at Taste of Honolulu.

She said Portillo welcomed the challenge of cooking healthy, without salt, sugar and a lot of fat. "Most of the students said, 'Yeah, right, but who's going to eat it?' " Rothermel said. "The trick is using spices and herbs to find different flavors, rather than using so much salt. It's so easy to pick up the salt shaker."