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Legendary Chef Created the School to Give Opportunity to Unprivileged Youths
Chicago culinary legend Rick Bayless is celebrated for the success of his Frontera Restaurant Group, which helped popularize regional Mexican cuisine with the launch of his Frontera Grill in 1987.
For decades, he has been giving back through philanthropy, starting with Frontera Farmer Foundation, which for more than two decades has provided grants to small farms that produce fresh, sustainable, local food for the hungry Chicago region.
He extended his efforts when he created Impact Culinary Training, which prepares selected underprivileged youths for careers in the restaurant industry. I had the pleasure of attending the graduation of the school's 10th cohort as its home base in The Hatchery, the food business incubator located in Chicago's East Garfield Park neighborhood.
It was a grand sendoff for the five graduates, who were assigned to internships in some of the city's leading culinary kitchens: Jamaica Baker (Justice of the Pies), Lauryn Peacock (Galit), Amelia Vargas (Topolobampo), Jamal Walker (Lula Cafe), and Travion Young (Frontera Pastry)
In his keynote remarks, Rick noted the challenges the graduates weathered as they came into the program with hopes and ambitions but no formal restaurant training.
"You had to learn to speak a whole new language. We put you through a boot camp, basically to train you on all the equipment that you probably had no idea about and the ingredients that you had to master, and you did all of that," he said.
He continued, "In addition to making it through this really intense boot camp, you also hopefully, along the way, developed a real respect for the profession that you guys are going into, and what it means to be part of that profession. And hopefully along the way, you not only learned respect for the profession, but you learned a deepening respect for yourselves, because you guys have so much to offer."
As he concluded his remarks, Rick summed up: "You guys showed that you had the grit to do that. That's a word I would like to underscore there, because it's it takes a lot of courage to do what you guys have done, and you have done it incredibly well. I want to thank you for what you are going to contribute to the restaurant culture of Chicago, because you guys are going to be the Next Generation coming out and doing the real deal."
Also hailing the graduates and their achievements were Matt DeRose, who manages Rick Bayless' edenic urban food garden in Chicago; Allison Scott, who directs the Frontera Restaurant Group's test kitchen and serves as a private dining chef; Dan Black, chef at The Violet Hour and an Impact Culinary Training graduate; and these leaders of the school's training program:
Lorraine Nguyen, Impact Culinary program manager.
Matt Miller, Impact Culinary instructor.
Kelly Dull, Impact Culinary assistant and pastry chef extraordinaire.
Following the ceremony, attendees enjoyed a delicious buffet-style lunch prepared by Impact Culinary students and graduates. These are just some of the servings.
Yes, I filled my plate.
A side note about the weather... There's a longstanding joke that if you don't like the weather in Chicago, wait five minutes. The morning of the Impact Culinary Training graduation on November 21 was a great example of that.
There was a freak blast of snow, lasting just a few hours, that made travel to the event challenging. Nearing blizzard conditions at times, it dumped around four inches of snow.
Then the temperatures rose, it rained, and all the snow was gone by nightfall. And we haven't had measureable snow since.
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