The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A fresh batch of ‘Dinersaurs’
Former O’Rourke’s Diner owner starting cooking class for Middletown children
MIDDLETOWN — The man who ran the O’Rourke’s Diner on northern Main Street for some 50 years wants to pass some of what he knows on to a much-younger generation.
Brian O’Rourke, 73, the future teacher of a cooking class for elementary-school children — who would be dubbed “Dinersaurs” — conceived the idea in cooperation with local businessman Ryan Cayer and the North End Action Team, a communitybased nonprofit.
“At this stage of my life, all I have to give is myself,” O’Rourke said.
He’s seen first hand the joy cooking can bring to children. He’s taught classes and summer programs before and currently cooks for Cayer’s family a couple of nights a week, bringing over a dozen cookies.
“I have a passion for food,” he said, adding he wants to pass that passion on to children.
He has acquired a good amount of experience with teaching children to cook for themselves over the years — and has challenged them with some ambitious projects.
One summer, he taught a program when a friend was superintendent of schools 25 years ago, where he had the students make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from scratch — meaning they made the bread, the peanut butter and the jelly.
The name “Dinersaurs” itself comes from another time he taught children. It was originated by a leader of the Korn School in Durham for a children’s program with O’Rourke some 20 years ago.
But before the “Dinersaurs,” complete with Tshirts in four colors, can start cooking, the program must find a kitchen to host it and secure the needed funding.
“I have a small apartment,” O’Rourke said. “I am not going to have four kids in a small apartment.”
He said he arrived at the four-child limit for the classes in consultation with his sister, who was a kindergarten teacher for 40 years and
advised him that he would not want to try to control more than four 8-year-olds.
O’Rourke has been conducting a pilot class with just one student, Cayer’s younger son, Calvin, who is in second grade.
He says the instruction has gone beyond merely teaching Calvin to make cookies. He has also been teaching how measurements relate to one another, such as three teaspoons making a tablespoon.
And each lesson includes a word of the day, O’Rourke said. In one recent lesson, it was “emulsify,” which means to combine ingredients that are hard to mix, such as oil and water.
“I really like it,” Calvin said. “I think it’s really fun to learn.”
Calvin said they’ve mostly made baked goods so far.
O’Rourke said the classes will not focus on Irish cooking. But he adds, “I always end up making a soda bread because I make 15 different ones.”
Calvin recalled making a soda bread with raisins.
Ryan Cayer said there are a few donors but adds that NEAT will need to raise about $4,500 to get the classes running. That will pay for things, such as aprons, shirts, cooking utensils and graduation pack
Before the “Dinersaurs,” complete with T-shirts in four colors, can start cooking, the program must find a kitchen to host it and secure the needed funding. “I have a small apartment,” O’Rourke said. “I am not going to have four kids in a small apartment.”
ets to encourage the students to continue cooking. O’Rourke is donating his time, Cayer added.
Calvin, 7, and his brother Charlie, 10, are pitching in with the fundraising by collecting returnable cans and bottles, Cayer said, estimating they have raised $20 to $30.
O’Rourke is well known in the community. His uncle founded the family’s traditional railroad-car diner in the 1940s. O’Rourke said he would buy 20 newspapers each day to give the diner’s customers something to read, then cut all the sports columns at the end of the day for his father.
“If someone was coming in from out of town, they would always bring a newspaper,” he said.
But while there was a sense of community in the business, it could be grueling. O’Rourke would start work at 1 a.m. and be on his feet until the diner closed at 5 p.m.
When he closed the diner last June, he said, “it was just time. … I wore out a lot of parts of my body.”
In retirement, O’Rourke said, he works out every morning and does Tai Chi at night.
“I try to make every day the best day of my life,” he says.
People interested in donating to the cooking classes can do so at via Paypal at https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HJFTTP8JA2CGY or Venmo at @NEATMiddletown.