Culinary students leave it all on the table

AI can’t do this: create a gourmet meal for dozens of people, pacing it over five courses and making it an education for all.

Earlier this year I snagged tickets to Chef’s Table, dinners for which students in Flathead Valley Community College’s 22-month program show their burgeoning skill. (Their current project is Mezze!, a pop-up serving lunch Wednesday to Friday this week.) 

After drinks and appetizers, Chef’s Table diners are called to the main event. My companion said, “You mean, we get to eat in there!?” referring to the nerve center of culinary arts, the gleaming instructional kitchen.  

Diners sit in small, assigned groups made up of Flathead Valley foodies, but also sometimes parents of students along with other adventurous folk. All bonded over the parade of dishes. One contained 15 elements, including seared scallops, crunchy fiddlehead ferns and a lush parsnip flan. 

I believe it was during this course that the couple opposite us conferred and the dad quickly stabbed at his phone and put it away. “I just DoorDashed them some food,” he said, referring to kids at home. Tonight everybody would get what they craved.

Food service is formative work. You not only learn food safety but etiquette, collaboration and cooperation. At Chef’s Table, I marveled at the team executing the mission and asked to peek behind the scenes. 

Once I got the proper clearance, I spent much of March 6 witnessing the runup to the “American Farmland" dinner. Program Director Manda Hudak grabbed me a chair and offered a beverage. I hesitated, and she said, “It’s what we do” — hospitality. 

This midmorning, Executive Chef Andy Blanton schools a student in braising short ribs (“we’re in control — not the pan, not the oil”). Even to a vegetarian, they smell divine. Nearby, students trim daisies and sunflowers and pluck them into small, galvanized buckets for centerpieces. 

The just under a dozen students seem to be everywhere, each playing a role in the ballet, whether it’s sweeping the floor, hunting down a shipment of blue cheese, or shouting “Corner!” and “Behind!” as they circulate with ingredients and pans. No one travels empty-handed. No one stands idle. 

Kitchen mixers lazily grind away, the spray of dishwashing is ever-present and the whiteboard blooms with to-dos including an alluring sounding “spinach foam.” 

I returned several hours later. Though never frenetic, the students clearly have the 6 p.m. start in mind. Blanton is back at the burners, this time imparting his philosophy of sauce over a white roux. Glassware sparkles in neat rows. Chairs roll in on carts. Red bandannas are folded and arranged. 

Malcolm Goble comes in and takes the covers off monitors strategically placed in the room. Diners can watch the culinary action on these through camera feeds he manages from the corner. A student in the graphic design program, he says this was an easy gig to say yes to: “They feed me.” 

Baking and pastry chef Joshua Rutherford brings us some sunflower butter-filled chocolates that didn’t make it whole out of the mold. Pity.   

The whiteboard clears. 

Several students approach Hudak and say, “Shall we take the drink stuff upstairs?” 

Hudak checks the time: “Yes! Let’s go.” 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at [email protected].