Student Chefs Win Artisphere’s Best in Show
Budding chefs in the culinary programs from Donaldson Career Center and Golden Strip Career Center teamed up to have a food booth at this year’s three-day Artisphere Festival in downtown Greenville. This was the first time that a “non-restaurant” site was given the opportunity to have a space in the Culinary Café at the festival.
The menu from the culinary students’ booth was based on a corn theme: mache choux (Creole creamed corn), corn gazpacho, elote (Mexican street corn) caramel bacon kettle corn, and pulled pork taco with slaw.
As an added bonus, the career center team won the $500 “Best in Show” award. Artisphere jurors were sent to judge each food booth on a sample food item and scoring was based on presentation, creativity and taste.
We are proud of our students from these culinary programs and we are especially proud of the teachers, Chef Drew Archer (Donaldson Career Center) and Chef Eli Edwards (Golden Strip Career Center) for their extra dedication and creativity. The culinary program teaches students about hospitality, food preparation and management, as well as menu planning.
Artisphere gave students an experience that is priceless – they networked with professionals, prepped food on-the-spot, engaged in customer service skills, and they had to think on their feet - all in a fast-paced, outdoor environment.
Chef Archer said, “To offer my students an experience in off-site catering is exciting – we worked on this event for weeks - from creating the menu, to estimating quantities, to refining the recipes. I treated this like a real restaurant set-up. Students really got to see what it’s like to load-in and load-out all of the supplies for large catering. The students did all of the work and they did an incredible job.”