Teacher Tuesday: A Cook Who Cares

Have you ever worked in a restaurant?

I have. When I was growing up, my aunt owned several family restaurants in the Wind Lake/Muskego area. I had the privilege of working for her and was given the opportunity to perform every conceivable food-service related task you can think of. Dishwasher, Busser, Prep Cook, Head Cook, Hostess, Waitress, Manager – you name it, I did it. I loved the experience and went on to work in food service in some capacity throughout my adult life.

During my years at the restaurants, I learned many valuable lessons:

• Dropping an overloaded bus pan full of heavy dishes down a flight of concrete stairs causes every dish to break into a gazillion tiny pieces and makes a horrific noise that goes on for an eternity. This makes the manager very angry.
• Not cleaning a table the very second a customer leaves it causes the hostess to seat a new customer at another station, which means the waitress in your station gets very angry with you, the busser, for making her lose a potential tip.
• Toast has degrees of “doneness.”  As a waitress, when taking an order, it is important to specify to the cook the exact shade at which bread is considered toast by each customer. If the cook does not understand each customer’s idea of the perfect toast “doneness” then the toast gets sent back to the kitchen, sometimes two or three times. This makes the customer, and the cook, very mad – at you.
• As a cook, if you can’t find the house pancake recipe because the manager dropped a bowl of Cream of Broccoli soup on it, washed it and set it under a frying pan so it wouldn’t crinkle as it dried, it is not okay to make up your own recipe to serve the customers. They want Aunt Corrine’s pancakes, not yours. Serving your pancakes makes the customers, and Aunt Corrine, very mad at you.
• And finally, there are no meaner, crabbier, snarlier people on the face of the earth than hungry businessmen on their lunch break. Yuck. I’d rather hand-feed a school of piranhas.

So, as you can tell, there’s a lot of emotion going on in restaurants. Food service is not an easy industry to work in – someone is always yelling.

Now imagine trying to prepare a classroom of young adults with intellectual disabilities for a career in this field. Most of us would want to protect these students from the harshness of the food industry, not throw them into the midst of the boiling, chopping, cutting, raging machine. Who could possibly do this?

Someone who has been in the thick of it. Someone who feels the intensity that comes from the understanding that food safety is vital. Personal hygiene is vital. Consistency is vital. Customer service is vital. Quality is vital. Someone who knows what the consequences are for lacking in any one area of food service – sick customers, injured employees, poor ratings, failing health inspections, losing business...

But to teach at Shepherds College, this someone would also have to be patient - to work with hands that may be less than nimble. He would have to be clear and concise with his instructions – to work with minds that may be easily confused. He would have to be firm - so anyone could grasp by his tone how important his instructions are. And most importantly, he would have to love God and desire to show this love to all his students - by giving them the dignity of being treated as equals in a tough industry. 

This “someone” at Shepherds College is Chef Brett McCarthy.

Chef McCarthy is perfect for teaching our students. He treats them as he would treat a student without a disability – by setting high standards and having high expectations that these standards will be met. Through gaining a full understanding of the students’ disabilities, he helps them figure out how to accommodate their limitations in a professional kitchen without compromising the precise operations of a well-run food service environment. 

The students love and respect Chef McCarthy and, in response, meet his expectations, as seen by several of the students who passed rigorous exams in the culinary field.

His students are challenged to learn correct techniques and receive real culinary experiences, just like the students at any other culinary program in the country. Chef McCarthy knows it is important that the students experience in his classroom the real pace and the real discipline they’ll experience working at any quality restaurant. He doesn’t want them to be surprised if the head chef yells at them when they get to their internships or their jobs after college.  His students will be fully prepared.

So when you see the students in their chef’s jackets looking like professionals, feel confident in knowing that, as students of Chef McCarthy, they are just that – well-trained professionals.

 

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.