Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By DAVE DOMESCIK | Staff Writer

PELHAM – The Pelham High School Culinary Team will have the chance to showcase their skills on the national stage in May.

The team will compete in the National ProStart Invitational in Baltimore after winning the Alabama ProStart Invitational in February.

Before the February competition, students were rigorously trained by chef Alex Arceo, chef Dawn Hazlewood and chef Emily Roy to hone their craft in culinary classes at PHS. Throughout the process, students developed a full competition menu consisting of an appetizer, entrée and dessert.

Along with the food, the competition demanded excellent recipe costing, safety and sanitation, teamwork and plating design. The entire production ran for one hour at the competition at Orange Beach, where the team was announced as the first-place winner.

Arceo spoke on what it has been like to mentor and coach these students over the past few months as they prepare for the national competition against teams from across the country.

“It is truly a work of art,” Arceo said. “Not only are we working with different perspectives, personalities, ideas and personal experiences, we are working with future chefs with drive and grit to always outperform. We tell them to shoot for the moon and they go for the stars.”

Arceo further explained how impressed he is by the students, who continue to surprise him with their culinary skills.

“It is enlightening to see how our students are able to take an idea and enhance it with certain ingredients to elevate every dish,” Arceo said. “As mentors, it is always important to remind ourselves that the student makes the decision and develops confidence and skill to maintain the decision, which is why we always test our recipes that we class develop and then master them.”

When it comes to the competition itself, Arceo believes that words rather than actions set the PHS culinary team apart.

“Every team deserves a standing ovation for the hard work and dedication it takes to get to compete, it often takes tenacity to execute a perfect dish,” Arceo said. “However, the thing that set Pelham Culinary apart from the competition was their ability to communicate while performing their masterpiece. In the culinary world, kitchens are often tight spaces, so the words ‘Heard’ or ‘Heard chef’ are always being said in unison, almost like a beautiful song. This level of communication demonstrates safety practices that our team was hailed for at this year’s competition.”

Arceo and the rest of the team have been hard at work preparing for the national competition, and gave a behind-the-scenes look at what goes in to prepare for the National ProStart Invitational.

“We plan to enforce the skills that our competitors developed and truly master every aspect of their dish, communication, time management, safety and sanitation,” Arceo said. “Additionally, chef Roy and chef Hazlewood along with myself have already started reaching out to industry professionals to give us their feedback and expertise to better enhance our team.”

Regardless of whether Pelham wins at the national competition, Arceo is proud of the students he teaches.

“I am extremely proud of each individual,” Arceo said. “They each bring their own perfectionist talents to the teams that have been vital to the functionality of their performance. I am proud of their ability to communicate, maintain level heads, clean, listen and prepare to help each other at any given moment. It truly is a work of art to watch them compete.”

Arceo concluded by explaining how the culinary arts program is more than just a way to learn how to prepare food.

“Culinary arts at Pelham is not just cooking,” Arceo said. “It is so important that our stakeholders and community understand this. Yes, we do teach them to cook, however, it is so much more than that. We are preparing future artistic chefs, managers, culinarians, restaurateurs, foodservice professionals and hospitality professionals. We incorporate math, literacy and science standards into each of our lesson plans along with our culinary content lessons. This alone enhances every aspect of our program courses to further involve each student into the content and make connections to their everyday core classes. We are preparing future professionals and we are passionate about this.”

Amanda Orr, a culinary arts student and the ProStart team manager at PHS, reflected on the moment when the team won the Alabama ProStart Invitational.

“My reaction was that my heart dropped and I was so incredibly relieved that all of our hard work paid off and got recognized,” Orr said. “It was a good feeling.”

Orr then described the dishes created for the competition, a mouthwatering collection of flavors.

“The appetizer consisted of butter-poached lobster, potato gnocchi and a lobster butter sauce topped with watercress,” Orr said. “The entrée was aged beemster Gouda polenta, edamame succotash, pan-seared lamb chops and red wine reduction sauce. The dessert was purple marbled white chocolate shell filled with Amaraula mousse, guava coulis, coconut cookie crumble and a guava tuile.”

Orr further reflected on the challenges and personal experiences she accrued as part of the ProStart program.

“For me, the most challenging part of preparing for ProStart was making the recipe templates and making sure that they were accurate to what my team was doing,” Orr said. “The personal experience I have gained from ProStart are the skills of time management, organization, the confidence that I used to help lead my team and a strong work ethic is what I’ll take from this experience and apply to my life after high school.”

Orr concluded by recognizing that the PHS culinary team will have to continue on the right track in order to find success at nationals.

“To prepare for nationals my team and I are working to elevate our dishes and become more comfortable cooking them, to have the best performance possible while we’re in the competition environment,” Orr said.

For more information on Pelham High School, visit Phs.pelhamcityschools.org.