A taste of the real world at high school's culinary program

Brock Johnson plated an omelet, wiped his hands on his apron and stepped into the dining room at Lola in downtown Seattle.

In his black T-shirt and Birkenstock clogs, the 27-year-old executive chef was a walking advertisement for Bev Anderson's Culinary Arts program at Shorewood High School. But to the 24 students who looked up from their breakfasts to greet "Mrs. A's success story," he is more than just the Shorewood grad who taught them how to braise Pacific octopus and butcher a suckling lamb: He's a rock star. He's not the only star in Bev Anderson's firmament. You'll find Anderson alumni — newly minted or fledged long ago — working in kitchens across town. They're pulling paychecks at Canlis and Café Juanita, Ray's Boathouse, Russell's and the Ruins, Union Square Grill and Yarrow Bay Café. Many credit their teacher for helping put them there.

Johnson is one. Nine years ago, he graduated from Anderson's popular culinary program to Western Washington University where he "studied English lit and kicked around in restaurants" before and after graduation.

A job running the kitchen at Bellingham's Mambo Italiano gave him a leg up when he made it his mission to move back to Seattle to work for Tom Douglas in 2004. Anderson set up the interview.

"Tom was doing her a favor by offering me some guidance," Johnson recalls. "But I went into it knowing that I was going to get him to hire me."

Shoreline School District's 2007 "Teacher of the Year" has fostered that can-do attitude in her students since developing the curriculum 17 years ago. Hers will be a hard act to follow when she retires this month, turning the program over to a successor yet to be named.

Her mentorship clearly has advantages for her students, whether or not they end up pursuing a culinary career.

"I love her. She's like a second mom to me," says Jenae Christiansen, who graduated from Shorewood on Sunday. Her culinary education is part of the "backup plan" for her future. She hopes to become a hairstylist.

Her classmate Tim Lauch, an accomplished home cook who works at Spiro's restaurant in Shoreline and is headed for UW in the fall, says, "Women like men who can cook. Everybody likes people who can cook."

But for their friends Andrew Nicholson and Brooke Snyder, the program has been the catalyst for a career: each will attend culinary college this fall.

At Shorewood, Anderson built relationships with students that extended far beyond teaching knife skills or nutrition. Christiansen credits her teacher for securing her a job at Kirkland's Yarrow Bay Café, where she's worked the past year.

She started as a dishwasher and now mans the pantry station, making salads and plating desserts

At Shorewood, Christiansen and her classmates spent two hours each school day working in a professionally equipped kitchen flanked by a 30-seat dining room and a spacious classroom outfitted with seven identical cooking modules. A birdhouse stands in their extensive herb garden. The sign above its door crows "Cookin' Skul."

Juggling a rigorous culinary curriculum along with an academic schedule — and for some, after-school jobs — can be a difficult challenge, says Anderson. But they've proved again and again that they're up to the task.

"Our program is geared toward industry standards," she explains. "The skills I teach — teamwork, organization, being a good employee — that's what it's all about. Here, I'm their boss."

To hone their skills and supplement the program financially, students cater teas, bake cookies and provide box lunches for meetings held throughout their community. And then there's everyone's favorite part of the curriculum: "Guest Chef Night."

That's when the students cook four-course meals designed and directed by some of the area's top chefs, a two day effort that culminates in a restaurant-style extravaganza held at the school. It's where parents, friends and supporters pay $25 to have their socks knocked off by this eager group of talented teenagers.

"The whole purpose is for the students to learn from the experts in the industry," says Anderson. "We use the same purveyors they do — Merlino's, MJ Meats, Ocean Beauty, Charlie's Produce — who deliver right to our door the way it's done in the real world." Guest Chef Night is also the program's biggest fundraiser, she adds.

Among the chef participants donating time (and frequently materials), at 10 sold-out events this year were Brock Johnson and another former student, Union Square Grill's Seth Prigg, who has since moved on to work at Ray's Boathouse.

Other top toques in this year's lineup: James Beard Award-winning chef John Sundstrom, Campagne's Daisley Gordon and Ponti Seafood Grill's Josh Green — son of Shorewood's principal, John Green.

Gordon and Sundstrom were among the chefs who welcomed Shorewood's culinary class into their restaurants early this month as part of a weekend-long immersion course dubbed "Seattle on a Plate."

They shopped at Pike Place Market, breakfasted at Lola and the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. They toured FareStart, the organization that offers culinary education to the homeless and disadvantaged — and whose guest-chef nights were the inspiration for Shorewood's.

That tour was led by FareStart's community-relations director, Jen Osborn. The 1990 Shorewood grad recalls making beef tongue during Anderson's "Foods & Nutrition" course — the modern-day version of home ec and a prerequisite for Anderson's program.

Friday night the kids broke into small groups to dine at some of the city's most talked about restaurants. Those who dined at Sundstrom's small-plates restaurant, Lark, on Capitol Hill, were awed by a 23-course feast. Christiansen — who got her first delicious taste of duck that night — says it was "the best dinner I've ever had."

Andrew Nicholson's group sampled an unforgettable pasta at trendy Tavolata in Belltown: ravioli stuffed with veal brains and ricotta. "I loved that stuff," he says. "I can't get off that!"

After Sunday night's dinner at the fussy steakhouse El Gaucho, parents joined the students for dessert to celebrate their accomplishments. For Nicholson and his classmate Brooke Snyder, who are going on to culinary school in the fall — he at Edmonds Community College, she at Portland's Western Culinary Institute — those achievements included a 12-week paid internship working as prep cooks at Canlis.

In that four-star kitchen they have washed and sliced produce, played "go fetch" for the more experienced cooks working the stoves and occasionally helped plate food during catered events.

"When I went out to eat before I worked at Canlis, I didn't really think about the amount of work that went into putting out a plate," says Nicholson, "or how many people it took to produce it." Having turned down an opportunity to cook at the camp he's gone to all of his life, he's keeping his fingers crossed, hoping to score a summer job at Canlis. Snyder is vying for the same position.

Executive chef Aaron Wright will make that decision soon. He welcomes culinary students into the Canlis kitchen and cites such Shorewood successes as Johana Bonnell, a former intern now working at the private club the Ruins, and three-year Canlis veteran, Leah Richards, a pastry chef.

"Not every intern makes the grade," he says. "Some kids are tourists — in a passive learning state. They're here for six weeks and they're done." Nicholson and Snyder, he says, appear to be in it for the long haul, exhibiting standards that should help them succeed as chefs.

"I'm never going to teach somebody a work ethic, or how to care. Brooke and Andrew care — a lot. They have the power and the vision. They realize this is what they want to do." Bev Anderson has been instrumental in showing them they could do it, Wright says. "She's created a unique opportunity" at Shorewood. "I hope that if I have kids someday, they'll have that kind of opportunity."

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com. More columns are available at seattletimes.com/nancyleson.