Kitchen Idols
Hawaii’s top chefs turn out Saturday to support the culinary program at Leeward Community College, where the chefs of tomorrow are being well-trained
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Chef Linda Yamada gives LCC student Narcesa Fukuda
(left) a few pointers on her grilling technique
Forget singing idols and movie idols. The spot-light’s on cooking idols at the sixth Taste of the Stars on Saturday at Leeward Community College.
Cooking idols are chefs so famous you know them by first name. Alan, Roy, Sam, Russell, D.K. They’ll be cooking on all burners at a major fundraiser for LCC’s Culinary Institute. Here’s a chance to sample food from Hawaii’s best restaurants at $100 a ticket.
At Taste of the Stars, you’ll experience 22 - yes, 22 - dining landmarks of the town. Dash the diet, and bring your appetite to West Oahu.
It’s for a good cause: education. This is not just any form of education. It’s vocational training for the cooking stars of tomorrow.
We visited LCC’s Culinary Institute recently to meet some star-makers, the chef-instructors who know the recipe for success in the foodservice industry.
Meet Linda Yamada, chef-instructor; Tommylynn Benavente, culinary arts professor, and Olelo pa’a Faith Ogawa, LCC graduate and private chef. Their names might not be top-of-mind with diners, but they have a lot to do with who’s preparing your meals today. They are the go-to players who top chefs trust for training and hiring recommendations.
LCC is a nurturing ground for young talent. The campus in Pearl City is the West Oahu pillar of higher education and the only culinary program serving the growing communities of Central and Leeward Oahu. With a panoramic view of Pearl Harbor as backdrop, LCC is a magical setting for Taste of the Stars.
This is where Yamada, Benavente and associates take starry-eyed students into the world of commercial food preparation and service. Here’s where kids out of high school who want to be like Alan, Roy or Emeril come to hone their skills. From teens to 30-somethings, they enroll in a two-year course that leads to an associate in applied science degree.
Chef Linda Yamada gives LCC student Narcesa Fukuda (left) a few pointers on her grilling technique
up-close and personal encounter with a professional kitchen environment. This is not your mom’s kitchen. LCC’s culinary classroom is spacious and well-equipped, thanks to a five-year fundraising effort and community support.
New encounters with cuisine take place here too. Students taste and work with ingredients they’ve never experienced before. In preparing a Tabouleh Middle-Eastern salad, for example, a student was introduced to bulgur wheat.
In the second through fourth semesters, students get hands-on experiences in short-order cookery, pantry skills, haute cuisine, baking and hospitality supervision. Mixed in with lectures and demonstrations are valuable work ethic disciplines that go beyond following recipes.
“We teach basic things that help you survive in the industry,“Yamada says. “Be on time. Take notes. Don’t talk back. If you’re five minutes late to my class, you’re in trouble.”
It’s boot camp for aspiring chefs, and not everyone makes it through the drill. If you’re female, the proving ground can be even more challenging. There’s a notion that women can’t hack it in a commercial kitchen. Everything’s too hot, too heavy and too demanding for their fragile physiques.
But at LCC, a third of the culinary graduates are women. The number is growing each year. But with less than 20 percent of all executive chef positions filled by women, the upper echelon of professional kitchens is still predominately male.
Restaurant kitchens can be intimidating, chauvinistic environments. The proper mindset is an essential tool. The ladies say once they change into their chef whites, they leave gender in the closet.
“When you hit the kitchen, think of yourself as a cook before you think of yourself as female,“Yamada says. “If you know how to cook and how to organize, you will be respected, and gender will not factor into the equation.”
Ogawa agrees, although she met a lot of doubting Thomases on her way up the ladder of success. “I just said, ‘I’ll show you!’”
And she did. Ogawa was LCC’s first female graduate and commanded the kitchen at Yacht Harbor restaurant for many years as executive chef. From there, she
went to Regent International in Fiji, taught at KCC, and helped open the award-winning Canoe House Restaurant at Mauna Lani Bay Hotel. Today, the Big Island resident owns a business called Faith & Friends, does food consulting, and is private chef for a select clientele. She also has a line of tea and honey products called Glow Hawaii.
To recognize Ogawa’s achievements, she is one of three inductees into LCC’s Hall of Fame. Other inductees this year are KC Jiro and Esther Asato of KC Drive Inn and Wisteria, and Hans Weiler of Hans Weiler Foods.
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