From classroom to kitchen: Learning from the masters

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Chef Mavro, George Mavrothalassitis, middle, shares a laugh with student chef Chae Choe, left, while preparing mushrooms in Chef Mavro's kitchen. Stuent chef Nolan west prepares foie gras in the background. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

With goose liver at $40 a pound wholesale, and given its nonstandard shape, West, a pantry chef at Chef Mavro, must think before wielding his knife, so as to create the least waste. Satisfied, he begins slicing the foie gras under the watchful eye of chef George Mavrothalassitis, then uses the point of the knife to draw shallow, crisscross cuts into the surface of each portion. This, Mavrothalassitis explains, causes the foie gras to adhere to the frying pan, allowing it to caramelize and cook properly.

At the center of this prosaic kitchen scene is a winning relationship that goes on in the kitchens of Hawai'i's best restaurants every day, involving dozens of students and recent graduates of Hawai'i's culinary schools. The are about 1,000 students in culinary programs around the Islands at any given time.

West is a student at Kapi'olani Community College. At Chef Mavro, with its innovative approach (each dish matched to a complementary wine; mix-and-match tasting menus) and an uncompromising selection of ingredients, he gets the opportunity to soak up such esoteric detail as how to prepare foie gras, and to work with ingredients too costly to be an everyday feature at school.

And Mavrothalassitis gets a willing, well-trained junior chef who already knows his or her way around a knife.

"He shows us something new every single day," said West, who moved here from Portland, Ore., to attend KCC. The curriculum and credentials of the chef-instructors were at least equal to that of other schools West considered, he said, but the price — and, yes, the location — were superior. "At KCC, you learn the fundamentals," he said. "Here at the restaurant, you put them to use."

Mavro's back of the house is dominated by students or recent graduates; last month he was recognized by the local chapter of the American Culinary Foundation for his willingness to train and open opportunities for young culinarians. "When they come to me, they know already how to work. I am the next step. I teach them what I know," he said. And he's fine with knowing that, after a year or so, they'll move on to move up, or to someplace where they can get a different kind of experience.

Give and take

In his commitment to working with students, Mavro is far from alone.

Fern Tomisato, program coordinator for the Leeward Community College program, said connections between Hawai'i's well-known chefs and the culinary schools flow both ways.

Chefs count on student volunteers to help with special events, such as the constant round of tasting fund-raisers they're asked to staff. "By the time they graduate, the students have had the opportunity to become pretty well known to the chefs," Tomisato said. This helps when chefs turn to the culinary schools for recommendations for staff. "Oftentimes, what happens is that the chefs will say, 'What about this particular student that I worked alongside at this event? He seemed sharp, I liked his attitude.' Then the instructor can give them a second opinion."

Furthermore, chefs and others in the restaurant industry serve on the culinary program's advisory boards, providing curriculum direction and assistance in fund raising. "We really rely on them and they rely on us," she said.

A number of the student chefs on Mavro's team owe their connection with him to Frank Leake, a longtime chef-instructor at KCC who serves as a mentor to students who show particular promise. "Chefs talking to chefs, that's how it's done," he said.

Restaurateur DK Kodama said he and the chef managers at his three Sansei Seafood & Sushi Bar restaurants call on the schools "all the time," especially on Maui, where it's more difficult to find properly trained staff. He is so committed to that give-and-take relationship that, when Maui Community College was designing its $13 million culinary center with multiple minirestaurants staffed by students, he urged them to include a sushi bar and is donating the equipment they'll need. His staff will help teach the sushi classes.

He said the community colleges give the students knowledge and solid work habits. Then, said Kodama, "you can teach them your way."

Kodama, who came up the hard way and wishes he'd had the opportunity to go to culinary school, would like to see the schools better financed. "I wish the students could get more hands-on experience with different kinds of products. They can't touch some nice hamachi or lamb or duck because the programs just don't have the money. They have to get that on the job."

Culinary school faculty say about three-quarters of culinary students hold down at least a part-time job, which means it's often difficult for them to complete the program in the expected two years. But, Tomisato said, chef-owners of restaurants, who often started in exactly this way, are particularly understanding about adjusting schedules for students, who often must rush directly from their last class to begin prep work in a restaurant kitchen. For example, Mavro gives West Wednesdays off because the student has a lab that day that extends into the afternoon.

Although the web of personal connections between schools and chefs has its place, Hale 'Aina 'Ohana, a nonprofit organization that seek to aid the culinary training programs here, is in the final stages of creating an online database that allows select students nominated by their instructors to mount their resumes alone for password access by member restaurants. The Web site could be up early next week (information: 537-9500, ext. 340).

Mavro's 'young Turks'

After years at the executive level in hotel kitchens, Mavrothalassitis opened his own restaurant because he wanted to cook again. At first, he reassembled his journeyman-level team from the hotels, but then he realized that too many cooks were, if not spoiling the soup, at least all standing over the same pot. As those chefs found other positions, he decided that what he needed was "people who were still excited about cooking and who could execute my craziness" — people who weren't yet pushing an agenda of their own, and were excited about learning.

Mavro's team of "young Turks" includes four young men from widely divergent backgrounds:

Chae Won Choe, 32, originally from South Korea, moved to Hawai'i when he was 10 years old and says it was the TV Food Network that taught him English. "I knew cooking terms before I knew how to introduce myself," said Choe, an exceptionally well-spoken and insightful spring 2000 graduate of Kapi'olani Community College who now is Mavrothalassitis' right hand. He worked briefly at the Wai'alae Country Club before one of his former KCC instructors told him about an opening at Chef Mavro. Choe, 32, had been an unhappy sales executive with a yen for the kitchen when he decided to enter KCC.

At Chef Mavro, he has rediscovered the excitement and the passion that he felt when he first entered culinary school. When a shipment of perfect little chanterelles arrives from France, or Waialua grower Jeanne Vana comes in the door with a box of heirloom tomatoes still warm from the soil, "this is what I went to school for."

But Choe has a very clear-eyed view of the profession he has chosen. "Ninety-nine percent of the job is very tedious, very labor-intensive. You really need to be focused and not to be lazy," he said. "A kitchen is not a cool place, not a comfortable place. Service time is crazy; a week of stress boiled down to three hours." Given all this, he said, "You need to do it because you love it. Nothing else will get you through."

Lee Jackson, 32, a June graduate who took over the fish station two months ago with virtually no restaurant experience. Jackson is from Manchester, England; his brother had lived in Hawai'i for 15 years, so, when he decided to make a career change from electronics, he applied to KCC. Filleting a gorgeous whole onaga, Jackson said he learned to handle fish at KCC, "but nothing of this magnitude." He seems a little amazed to be where he is. "At first, the job was quite overwhelming," he admitted. "There's so much to know."

Jason Jutz, 23, a third-semester student who works part time, on weekend evenings, handling the pantry (cold food) station and appetizers. Jutz was born in Atlanta, but, with a father in the hotel industry, he has moved around a lot, including, last November, to Hawai'i. He plans to complete his work at KCC and then move on to the prestigious Culinary Institute of America for advanced training and finally to work in Europe for a while. He aspires to someday owning a small, "precision-oriented" restaurant like Chef Mavro: "He has shown me where I can go if I follow the right paths."

And West, 23, who juggles a full-time job with a full course load. He works the pantry station and is training on the fish station. "Chef is tough," he said. "But tough makes a good teacher. He's strict on his standards, so you really learn."