Culinary Arts

Lana Swett	Janelle Saucier

Instructor: Lana Swett
Educational Technician: Janelle Saucier

Everyone is interested in food and the Culinary Arts Program students are working to do something about it.  They move efficiently around the kitchen preparing food for a variety of purposes during the course of a school week.  A regular routine is preparing food for the student run restaurant called “The Food Place.”  Culinary Arts students especially like the hands-on work that is done in a realistic setting.  The students take orders at the tables while other students in the kitchen serve up the food which has been prepared during the forenoon.

 In addition to learning in the classroom and running a restaurant, students apply what they have mastered by completing a variety of projects that may spring up unexpectedly during the course of the week from catering a local non-profit group or organization banquet to baking a birthday cake for a customer who remembered at the last minute. The students all take things in stride while experiencing the ins and outs of restaurant and commercial food preparation.  All of this is integrated into their hands-on work in the kitchen, so that learning by doing is the overall theme. 

We pride ourselves by building strong work ethics that will carry beyond high school well into adulthood.

First year students will learn:

Ø    Sanitation and personal hygiene

Ø    Kitchen safety and first aid

Ø    Standardizing and converting recipes

Ø    Research careers in Culinary Arts

Ø    Table Service

Ø    Using kitchen tools and commercial equipment

Ø    Basic elements of baking

Ø    Basic methods of cooking

Ø    Short order cookery

Second year students will continue to build on these skills and also learn :

Ø    Menu planning

Ø    Nutrition

Ø    Costing and portion control

Ø    Purchasing and receiving

Ø    Complete a SRVC employment portfolio and make industry contacts

The Culinary Arts Program can help prepare students for their future by gaining entry level skills and knowledge to be employed in establishments such as:

Ø    Restaurants

Ø    Cafeterias

Ø    Fast Food Operations

Ø    Health Care facilities

Ø    Catering businesses

Many graduates are now in the field working in jobs such as restaurant managers, chefs, prep cooks, line cooks, military food specialists, servers, and dishwashers. Students have ample opportunities to continue their education by attending a variety of post secondary colleges.