Pressure cooker: Students showcase culinary skills in heated competition

Mar. 12—Garlic pepper crusted ahi tuna with an avocado corn salad and blue corn tortilla chips.

Spiced rack of lamb with pesto couscous, tzatziki sauce and fresh cucumber salad.

Zabaglione, an Italian custard, served in coupe glasses and topped with caramelized sugar.

These dishes are just a sampling of the fare developed and served by contestants in the New Mexico ProStart Invitational cooking competition — all high school students.

Hosted by the Hospitality Industry Education Foundation and the New Mexico Restaurant Association, the annual competition, held Tuesday at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, is designed to test students' culinary and restaurant management skills.

Teams from Albuquerque, Carlsbad, Los Alamos, Grants, Clovis, Silver City, Cloudcroft and Taos participated in the event on staggered schedules. They were tasked with making a three-course, gourmet meal in one hour, using only two gas burners.

No electric equipment.

No running water.

(Don't worry, though — there were hand-washing stations, cleaning supplies and boxes of rubber gloves nearby.)

The hope is the heat of the competition will allow students to showcase their strengths and get a taste of the fast-paced restaurant world, said Tom Schuch, the New Mexico Restaurant Association's director of education and coordinator of the ProStart program in the state.

"There is a lot of pressure inherent in the business," he said. "This is a step that will show them that they can do this — under pressure, in a short amount of time — and come out with a real quality product."

Taos High School's team of cooks buzzed around the kitchen.

Sophomore Sarai Romero managed the team's appetizer, plating golden tempura shrimp with cucumbers and tomato relish. Razielle Valencia, a junior, and Meili Brown, a senior, managed the rack of lamb entree. Junior Elliot Conlan baked a blueberry poundcake for dessert.

Senior Talia Tank managed the four cooks, moving back and forth between stations with tasting spoons and time checks.

The ProStart program, administered by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, teaches students across the country the culinary and management skills required by the nation's restaurant, hospitality and food service employers.

The results of Tuesday's competition, an opportunity for students to show off skills they'd been practicing for months, had not yet been released.

"We're looking at this as a learning experience," Melinda Atkinson, Los Alamos High School's culinary instructor, said as one of her students scooped zabaglione into glasses.

She added, "ProStart is a great opportunity for them to really enter into the restaurant industry and explore their interests."

The competition isn't exclusively culinary. It also invites teams of students to assume front-of-house roles, pitching a restaurant idea to hypothetical investors.

The Albuquerque High School students pitched Tàsi, a fast, casual establishment whose name is the Greek word for "drift." It would serve Mediterranean cuisine — the ahi tuna appetizer, sea bass with couscous and chimichurri, and poached pear with homemade ricotta for dessert.

There's a whole lot that goes into conceptualizing a restaurant, said Macario Lopez, a senior on Albuquerque High's management team.

Alongside fellow senior Sofia Cisneros-Alonzo and juniors Vanessa Ramos and Anna Martinez, Lopez envisioned every detail of Tàsi, from interior design to food sourcing, management structure and anticipated return on investment.

The team researched restaurant layouts, marketing options, nutrition and anticipated costs — breaking down the price per dish for rent payments, employee wages and raw ingredients.

"The initial cost for a restaurant is typically $500,000 up to $2.5 million — and that's even the low side," Ramos said. "It could cost up to $10 million for all equipment, renting out a space or even if you're building a space on your own. All of that goes into this."

"It takes a lot of time and a lot of research and a lot of math," Lopez added.

For Ramos, a future in restaurant management is well within reach. Her grandmother owns El Sarape, a restaurant in Albuquerque, and she plans to take over the business one day.

The ProStart competition is the first step in learning how to do that.

"It's a good opportunity for me to see what it takes to manage a restaurant — how to manage money, how to manage workers, how to manage food, all those important details," Ramos said.

All five cooks in Taos High School's kitchen said they plan to enter the restaurant industry or are now working in it.

Tank and Conlan work in a local bakery. Valencia hopes to attend culinary school in Europe. And Brown will start classes at the Culinary Institute of America's New York state campus after graduating this spring.

In addition to learning the culinary skills necessary to roast a rack of lamb or construct a dessert inside a bowl of hardened sugar, Taos High's chefs said they've learned useful skills like time management, teamwork, communication and food design.

Tuesday's competition allowed the students to demonstrate those skills and keep learning, said Adam Medina, Taos High's culinary instructor.

"I'm hoping that they learn from their experience," he said. "Anything that [happens] today might not be what they hoped to happen, but they've got to roll with the punches — learn to improvise and learn to hold your head up high."