‘Yes, chef!’: Santa Rosa Junior College culinary students fire up training cafe after 3-year closure

Thirty-five minutes before the 11 a.m. Thursday opening of Santa Rosa Junior College’s Cafe Rose, 20-year-old culinary students Carlee Austin and Romeo Li are standing in front of a 575-degree pizza oven. They’re busily prepping the dough, cheese and sauce they’ll soon make into thin-crust pizzas. It's a nerve-wracking moment as dozens of culinary students in their final year at the college count down the minutes until the restaurant opens.

After a three-year pandemic closure, the Burdo Culinary Arts Center training restaurant has reopened for the first spring session since 2020. The cafe opened briefly last fall, but this reopening marks an unmistakable return to normalcy.

The training restaurant is part of the curriculum for culinary arts students, giving them real-life experience, and it’s open to the public.

Twenty-five minutes before opening, instructor and Culinary Arts Department Chair Betsy Fischer walks through the dining room, ensuring each place setting is aligned with precision atop the tablecloths.

“We open in 25 minutes, and we're still wiping glasses. We’re about to have a menu meeting,” she said, asking the students to expedite their work with the authoritative but calm demeanor she's brought to the culinary program for over 20 years.

“Every day I go home, I feel like I've made a difference here,” she said, quickly returning her attention to the bustling preparations.

Culinary student Jodi Baron finishes setting her assigned table while explaining that culinary school fulfills a long-ago dream. Though she'd set out for a cooking career at 18, she ended up waiting tables for several years before becoming a flight attendant. A few years ago, the 58-year-old decided to embark on a second career in the culinary arts.

“Forty years later, here I am,” she said.

Ten minutes before the cafe doors open, chef instructor Joni Davis, 41, goes through the day's menu with the student waitstaff team. Opening dishes include grilled shrimp with a swipe of saffron garlic aioli; curried cauliflower soup; a five-spice chicken sandwich on bread made by the pastry students; thin-crust pizzas; and pan-roasted salmon with Meyer lemon olive salsa. Much of the produce used at the cafe is from the junior college’s Shone Farm.

In the heart-pumping moments before service, waitstaff students line up at attention and kitchen staff check and recheck their mise en place with a final pep talk from Davis. It's a given that on this first day, there will be mistakes, and the modestly priced menu reflects that this is a teaching kitchen.

As the doors open to eager guests who have nabbed reservations for lunch, Fischer gently guides each server to their assigned tables. Tickets for the kitchen build from a trickle to a steady stream.

“Fire salmon,” calls a chef to a student at the grill, alerting the kitchen to an order ready to be cooked. “Heard” comes back the professional response for a restaurant kitchen. After years of classroom teaching, the students are putting their skills to the test.

Davis inspects each dish before it leaves the kitchen, gently correcting any missteps and giving out plenty of encouragement. As a former junior college culinary student, she knows the pressure and excitement of a first day.

“This is my soul work,” said the 2013 graduate. Davis worked professionally as a pastry chef at Jackson's Bar and Oven, Bistro 29 and Nightingale Breads before teaching at the culinary school in 2020.

Cafegoer Joan Barrie, an instructor for the adult education program at the junior college, is a return customer to the cafe. Sitting with a table of co-workers, she decided to spend her birthday at the restaurant after coming several years ago. Other diners quietly nibble at their dishes, smiling at the students and giving encouraging feedback when things go awry.

As desserts arrive on tables after a long morning of preparation and cooking, Davis reflects on the students’ performance and prepares for the next service at 1 p.m.

“They start out so nervous, but halfway into service, it all starts to click. It's such a beautiful flow. You can just see it on their faces,” she said.