Fourth Ward school grows budding culinary stars
Gregory-Lincoln Education Center is growing budding culinary stars
WHEN asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Alakina Garcia, 13, doesn’t hesitate: “a professional chef at a five-star restaurant.”
She also has a plan B: own a restaurant with a bakery.
“I’ve been cooking since I was 5 years old,” Alakina says proudly, adding that her next step toward becoming a chef is getting into Westside High School, which has a strong culinary arts program that offers dual-credit courses with the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York.
Alakina, a seventh-grader at Gregory-Lincoln Education Center, already has plotted a deliberate path that is as self-assured and seamless as a tasting menu at a swank, big- city restaurant. Her goal seems close enough to taste.
That Houston is minting a new generation of would-be chefs is hardly surprising given the fertile, multiethnic culinary ground in which we live and dine. All these future Bobby Flays and up-and-coming Thomas Kellers need is someone to plant a seed. And others to water and nurture. And a few good bees to pollinate.
That story is taking place today at Gregory-Lincoln, a fine arts magnet grade school in the city’s Fourth Ward, where a teaching garden and culinary education project called the Cultivated Classroom thrives. The project’s green thumb is culinary educator Kellie Karavias, who brought the program to the school in 2011 after launching a similar school garden at Rodriguez Elementary School, her previous post.
Stars in their eyes
The Cultivated Classroom at Gregory-Lincoln began with eight garden beds in an unused plot on the north side of the school; it now has 16 beds, a 27-tree orchard and a chicken coop with egg-laying hens. With the help of Urban Harvest and the Houston Garden Club, as well as parents, teachers and volunteers, the program has grown into something lifechanging for the students who have embraced it. About 80 percent of students at Gregory-Lincoln come from economically disadvantaged homes, many struggling with food insecurity.
Two years ago, the project took an interesting turn when it was adopted by chefs Terrence Gallivan and Seth SiegelGardner of The Pass & Provisions, who turned their critically acclaimed restaurant into a handson learning annex.
On almost a monthly basis, Karavias’ students walk about two blocks to The Pass & Provisions, where they bring their school-garden bounty and learn from the chefs how to create meals. Their classroom is the same chic, whitetablecloth Pass dining room where guests sup on coddled egg and caviar and rabbit with morel mushrooms and fava beans. And their “lab” is the restaurant’s immaculate kitchen.
“It’s something so unique in Houston,” said food writer David Leftwich, the executive editor of Sugar & Rice magazine, who has been a guest lecturer in Karavias’ classroom. “It’s a cool interaction between a neighborhood school and one of the fanciest restaurants in Houston.”
It’s no wonder so many of the students have culinary stars in their eyes.
“My favorite part is going to Pass & Provisions,” chef-in-the-making Alakina said. “They teach us exciting stuff — some things we’d not learn until college. Every time I go there, I feel like I’m home. I like feeling the heat of the fire, hearing the sizzle of the meats. I love the aroma of the spices. Everything about it is something special.”
‘Brighter across the board’
Karavias is obviously delighted that Gallivan and Siegel-Gardner are championing her project and inspiring students to aim high in the food world. But she’s the first to point out that the Cultivated Classroom didn’t begin as culinary career prep. Its initial core goals, which remain today, were to help combat poor nutrition and childhood obesity by teaching students where food comes from, the fundamentals of nutrition and how to eat smarter. (Houston’s Recipe for Success organization has a similar mission and involves local chefs.)
“My thing isn’t to create foodies or chef kids,” Karavias said. “I want to teach them 10 recipes that are super nutritional and delicious so they’ll have them in their arsenal for life. When they leave, they can cook for themselves and grow food for themselves.”
The program aims to achieve a smart independence for its sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade participants by teaching them to fend for themselves in the kitchen, think deliberately about meal planning and be able to cook with what’s on hand — that old “teach a man to fish” proverb at its most practical and powerful.
“A lot of the parents don’t have the time to cook dinner. They’re worried about keeping the lights on,” Siegel-Gardner said. “Fresh and healthy food means happier kids who will do better in school tomorrow.”
Alecia Bell, principal at Gregory-Lincoln, has noticed positive change in the Cultivated Classroom students.
“You can see the difference in the academic performance, and you can see it in their face — healthier skin, their eyes, their smiles. They’re brighter across the board,” Bell said. “So often we focus on testing and getting students prepared to make state standards and exams. (The Cultivated Classroom) is an authentic process that helps them move along in their future that’s not limited to paper and pencil.”
But when they pick up that paper and pencil, the program’s effects can be profound, too.
‘It helped me be a better me’
On a recent visit to The Pass & Provisions, chef Gallivan led the students through an exercise of pricing a pizza that they would be making using vegetables and a pesto made from their garden. The calculations had to consider food costs, labor costs and ensure the restaurant made a profit.
The students’ initial pizza would have had to be priced above $20, considering all the factors — a bit too dear. So they adjusted the recipe, taking away some of the expensive cheese, and got the price down to about $17 — a more palatable price for customers.
Not only did students learn an important lesson in the business side of running a restaurant, they got to help make the pizza. And then sampled it during a gourmet lunch that also included broccoli strozzapreti with andouille bolognese.
Lessons at the restaurant always include lunch. As they eat, the students talk animatedly about the flavors of the meal components and how they stand out or work in harmony with other ingredients. These are young people who know what mise en place means, who can spell mirepoix and who understand the science of emulsification.
Each student carries a binder called My Culinary Chef Book, stuffed with notes, calculations, diagrams, sketches and recipes. Zaevia Hamilton’s binder might as well be a book of dreams. The 13-year-old, who is attending Westside as a ninthgrader in the fall, said the Cultivated Classroom has changed her life.
“It helped give me a different perspective on cooking and gardening. It helped me be a better me.”
Zaevia hopes to study pastry arts with the goal of owning her own bakery. But she also plans to take science classes for a possible career in medicine.
“If my culinary path doesn’t come through,” she said, “I’ve got to have a backup.”