The Broadmoor Bistro in Overland Park, Kansas, has the ambiance of fine dining. Staffers dash around in white jackets and matching hats, and a five-course menu includes tuna tartare, mushroom croquettes and liver sweetbreads.
But this restaurant is in a school building and the gourmet offerings are being served by Shawnee Mission School District culinary students.
The Broadmoor Bistro is one of several programs around Kansas City where high school students are learning the basics of a successful culinary career — everything from safety precautions and cutting skills to running and marketing a business.
“I think I've learned a lot from just getting the real world experience of when we get 26 tickets at once,” said Finley Jewell, a junior at Shawnee Mission South High School. “We're all like, running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”
The culinary classes are part of a push to introduce students to careers and enable them to graduate from high school with marketable skills. Around Kansas City, the programs are offered by individual school districts and also through collaborative career center programs involving multiple districts.
Students aren’t the only ones who benefit from these programs. Most of their culinary programs are open to the public. Here’s a look at what’s being offered at local student-run restaurants, cafes and eateries.
Shawnee Mission School District: Broadmoor Bistro
Once a week, students host a three-course dinner for 120 guests who are treated to dishes like panang curried short ribs, lobster gnocchi and black forest pot de creme.
The production is the focus of a district culinary program that teaches students how to manage a restaurant.
“We are really here just to make sure that the place doesn't burn down. The students do everything,” said Justin Hoffman, the bistro’s culinary coordinator. “I think that's the exciting part.”
Jewell said she thought the program was “super fun” at first, but had no idea that cooking would soon transform into her passion.
She hopes the experience will help her get accepted to a post-high school culinary school, maybe even the prestigious Culinary Institute of America.
“Nothing compares to cooking for somebody and them eating it and you seeing a smile on their face and them being like, ‘What did you do to this?’” Jewell said. “I think that right there is really what kind of pushes me to be excited about it.”
Faith Xiong already had an interest in cooking before joining the program. Her parents are first-generation refugees from Thailand and Laos, and she said it was essential to learn how to cook at a young age.
Her favorite thing about food is how it brings people and cultures together.
“Along with different restaurants, they are mixing different cuisines together to make better food,” Xiong said. “Cooking and being able to kind of understand food better with cooking and also people — it makes it really enjoyable to be able to do that.”
The Broadmoor Bistro hosts a guest chef mentor series several times a year, inviting chefs from around the country to produce a dinner with students.
Xiong said it’s been an honor to work alongside chefs like Kansas City’s Celina Tio and Don Yamauchi from Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina.
Tio, who owns The Belfry, said the culinary program offers a valuable first look at the career field. Because students get the opportunity to work in the front and the back of the house they can figure out what speaks to them, what doesn’t, and if culinary work is the right path for them at all.
“To know this early on is a benefit,” Tio said.
She’s seen students graduate from culinary schools with debts as high as $80,000. “Then they get a job and then they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t like this at all.’ And now they’re 80 grand in debt.”
Students serve a multi-course dinner to the public at 8200 West 71st Street in Overland Park from 5:30-7 p.m. every Wednesday.
Raytown School District: Cinder
Tal Thomas, a senior at Raytown High School, initially joined the school district’s culinary program because he didn’t want to be at school all day. Cooking — and eating — sounded better.
Now, Thomas wants to pursue culinary work as a career.
“I never really knew anybody who I shared a passion with and so when I came here and everybody loves what I love — it happens so easily,” Thomas said. “I just fell in love with these people, I fell in love with the place. I don’t want to leave but I got a couple more months.”
Thomas has been working in a kitchen since he was 16, so he says the monthly multi-course dinners the students serve at Cinder aren’t as hectic for him as they can be for some of his classmates.
“For me it’s just another day so I really like it, I enjoy it,” Thomas said. “I could do that every day if I had to.”
Raytown’s culinary program is offered at the Herndon Career Center, which also serves students from the Center, Grandview, Hickman Mills, Independence and Lee’s Summit districts.
For two and a half hours a day, five days a week, students learn the ins and outs of the restaurant industry. The knowledge is invaluable to graduates when they apply for jobs, said Mike Chrostowski, the culinary instructor.
“‘You’re an 18-year-old kid, what are you going to do in my restaurant?’ Well, I've served, I've been the saucier, I've done the prep,” Chrostowski said. “All the good stuff that goes along with working in a restaurant in a high-pressure situation.”
Chrostowski said dining at the restaurant is a chance for the public to be a “guinea pig” for students, but the cooking is at a high-level. The first time he saw that in action was when Cinder opened in October.
"It was kind of crazy, because our guests came in thinking maybe high school students are just going to cook cheeseburgers and hot sandwiches or chicken fried steak, something easy, ” Chrostowski said. “I think by the time all the guests left, they were really amazed at the level of food that we did.”
It should come at no surprise that his students are creating top-tier dishes — some of them are already working in Kansas City fine dining establishments.
Christopher Desmond, a senior at Lee’s Summit High School, works at Le Fou Frog in the River Market.
“I used to watch Chopped and stuff on the Food Channel,” Desmond said. “My parents can't cook so I kind of had to fend for myself and learn how to cook.”
He plans to continue his education with a chef apprenticeship at Johnson County Community College.
Chrostowski said the metro’s scholastic culinary programs easily transition to a community college education, and he’s thrilled that his students are joining a food scene that’s home to a list of James Beard nominated, and winning, chefs.
“Five months ago, these kids didn't know how to hold a knife. They didn't know how to tie an apron,” he said.
Students strive to open Cinder to the public once a month for a multi-course meal at 11501 E State Rte 350 in Raytown. Dinners have been completely booked since reservations opened in August, but keep an eye out on social media for upcoming events.
Kansas City Public Schools: Cardinal Cafe
The Cardinal Cafe is unassumingly tucked into the Manual Career and Technical Center, which serves students in the Kansas City Public Schools boundaries.
Open to the public, the cafe is frequented by district teachers and employees, who come to grab a coffee or freshly baked pastry, or stop in for breakfast or lunch.
Simone Houston, a senior at Crossroads Preparatory Academy, a charter school, said greeting people and putting a smile on their faces is her favorite part of running the cafe.
“There's so many different teachers and students that you get to meet on a daily basis that are really happy to have a hot meal for lunch,” Houston said.
Students spend their first semester learning cooking basics, like sanitation and prep work, before moving on to more in-depth skills like the five mother sauces and how to work the front of the house.
They use those skills to plan and prepare what they’ll serve guests on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those days, students get ready for the morning rush and bake the dough they made the day before. By the time lunch starts they’ve prepared sandwiches, salads and soups.
Houston said she joined the school’s culinary program after falling in love with its kitchen and marveling about how big it was in comparison to the one she has at home. She’s also taking a class on how to run a small business and is thinking of opening a bakery one day.
Not all students want to pursue a career in the kitchen. But they’re still learning at the cafe.
Noah Thomas, a senior at Lincoln Preparatory High School, said he’s been in the kitchen his entire life. He cooked with his grandma and recently took over cooking rolls and mini poundcakes for his family at Thanksgiving.
He said his culinary background helped him get a job at Hawaiian Bros, an island-themed restaurant chain.
“There are some things we don’t do there that I do here. Some things I don’t do here, I do there,” Thomas said. “It’s just that they offset each other; they also find peace with each other.”
When he’s working the cash register, Thomas can expect to see his mother in line. She likes to grab a cup of coffee, maybe a cookie or two, and sit and work.
Juanita Thomas said she’s happy her son and others are getting hands-on experience.
“I pride myself on always wanting him to be able to be self-sufficient, so when he came over here for culinary, I was like ‘great,’” Thomas said. “It’s safe to say that he won’t go hungry, and he can have a dessert.”
The Cardinal Cafe is open to the public on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1215 E Truman Rd., Kansas City, Missouri 64106. Guests will need to check in with the front office before making their way to the cafe.
Olathe School District: Les Arts Culinaires
Class looks a lot different in the Les Arts Culinaires kitchen — instead of writing notes on paper, students are painstakingly perfecting their piping skills.
That’s just one of the techniques students learn in the Olathe School District’s culinary program, according to teacher Philip Shaw.
“Students get a lot of exposure, because they’re obviously not going to leave here as Gordon Ramsay at 18 years old, right?” Shaw said. “You want them to find the niche in the industry that they want to do.”
Hosting a monthly banquet is one way students learn about all kinds of roles in and out of the kitchen — like making seating charts, taking reservations, and serving.
Briana Keese, a junior at Olathe East High School, said she likes opening their doors to the public.
“It’s really fun. It feels real, like people are paying for it,” Keese said. “Servers get tips, we’re making real food that people enjoy.”
Keese said the culinary program exposed her to a side of the kitchen she wasn’t initially interested in — cooking. She originally joined the program to learn more about baking, which she’s always done with her grandma.
“You could follow a recipe and you get an exact answer,” Keese said. “If it comes out right, you just feel that accomplishment.”
Students prepare a three-course dinner for the public one evening a month at 600 E Prairie St. in Olathe. Reservations are full for the 2023-2024 school year.
North Kansas City School District: Class Act Coffee
Craving a cup of coffee north of the river? Students in the North Kansas City School District just opened up a coffee shop.
To get going, they had to learn a lot on the business side, like determining their target audience, developing a brand voice and creating a social media presence.
Povielle Vansyoc, a junior at Oak Park High School, said she worked on the shop’s website and marketing.
“It was really confusing at first, because none of us had any clue what we're doing,” Vansyoc said. “But everyone kind of found their spot in making this a reality.”
Students help run the shop through the district’s Pathways Program, which opens up windows to different career fields. The cafe encourages an array of interests — like art students helping with design and mathematics students helping with finance.
Vansyoc, an aspiring entrepreneur, said she was drawn to the cafe because it offers hands-on learning experience, like barista training from Broadway Roasters.
“It was so cool seeing all the process and work that goes into it,” Vansyoc said. “And how the smallest tweaking can change the flavor of the beans.”
Elias Alavez, a senior at Oak Park, already works in a coffee shop. He works on the school cafe’s community outreach and says he’s a big advocate for “alternative learning.”
Alavez said he realized quickly growing up that he benefited more from hands-on experiences than sitting at a desk in a classroom.
“Learning tactilely really helped me learn faster, it's stuck in my brain more,” he said. “I believe that not every student has the same learning style so to get those opportunities to others really matters a lot to me.”
Class Act Coffee is open at 6465 N. Prospect Ave. in Gladstone, Missouri. Students serve the public from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday through Friday.
Fort Osage School District: Campus Grounds
Perhaps the coziest student-run spot is Campus Grounds, a coffee shop that is a project of the Fort Osage School District Career and Technology Center, which serves students from the Fort Osage, Blue Springs, Grain Valley, Independence and Oak Grove districts.
The cafe has a cabin-like feel with personal touches from students, like strings of Polaroids, and a patio if you want to catch some sun on your coffee break.
Students run the cafe as part of the school’s entrepreneurship studies, not only serving as its barista, but managing operations, marketing, and researching new products — like the recent Valentine’s Day rollout.
Dylan Watson, a senior at Blue Springs South High School, said she wanted to work at the shop because of the real-world experience. Plus, she’s always loved coffee.
“You grow such close relationships with the people you’re working with and it’s just awesome because you're learning so much while you're doing it,” Watson said.
Students work at the cafe in shifts. When they’re not being baristas, they’re working on business plans to compete in DECA, a club for students interested in a business career. During the second semester, students work on finding an internship in an industry they’re interested in.
Tracy Crowder, the cafe’s entrepreneurship teacher, said students have a lot going on between running the cafe and competing in DECA.
“If they're working in the coffee shop and then we have a deadline or they need to have a section of their paper done,” Crowder said. “A lot of time management goes into that for them.”
Campus Grounds, located at 26911 E US 24 Hwy in Buckner, is open to the public 6:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturday.
