BY BRENNAN REGO
Publisher’s Note: Welcome to “Pub’s Plugs,” a brand-new feature in The Weekly Sun where – every once in a while – I get to shamelessly plug anything that I think is particularly special or just plain cool.
The Sage School 10th- and 11th-grade students put on quite a special dinner on Friday, May 13. In fact, I would state that on that day the students were the proprietors of the best restaurant in town.
The dinner, dubbed a “Farm-To-Table Feast,” took place at the Elkhorn Springs Event Venue and is the culmination of a two-year education project. The students learn all about the food they will eventually serve, visit the farms from where they source the food (some of the food the students grow themselves), negotiate deals with local food providers and other businesses and entities, and finally cook and serve the meal to the lucky Feast attendees.
The dinner also doubles as a fundraiser for The Hunger Coalition. This year, the students raised $6,500 for the nonprofit, money that will be used to feed those in need in Blaine County.
For me, the dinner was both extraordinarily impressive as an education project and also struck quite a personal chord. Following my college education, I went to culinary school (which led to food writing for magazines in San Francisco, eventually leading to local journalism here in the Wood River Valley). The final class at most culinary schools is a “Restaurant Rotation” type class, in which students learn how to run each station of a restaurant, including positions in both the front and back of the house. The schools have their own restaurants from where they serve the food to paying customers.
I must say, The Sage School students put out a meal that was several times more delicious and more professionally served than any of the culinary school restaurants I have experienced (either as a student or as a diner). Kudos to The Sage School students! They should be very proud of the meal they put out and of everything they learned through the process. These gals and guys are certainly not going to head off to college without knowing how to boil water.
I can’t wait for May 2018; I will certainly be at the next Feast.