As Candice Austin talked about becoming a chef, her voice began to crack a little, her eyes welled with tears and she had to take a deep breath. A glance at the table of diners sampling her multi-course meal revealed she wasn't the only one getting emotional.
Austin is part of the chef training program at People Serving People, and at a recent Chefs for Change event, she spoke about the path that took her from prison to the shelter's industrial kitchen.
"This program has humbled me, and motivated me," she said. "The experience I've gotten in this kitchen is beyond words. In my life, I've been a 'taker,' but when I came here and saw people working so hard to give, it changed me."
The Chefs for Change series, which People Serving People calls "an elegant dinner party with a purpose," doesn't normally showcase the skills of these passionate trainees, which made the recent dinner unique. Past dinners have centered on a notable local chef, such as Scott Pampuch representing Corner Table and the Barbary Fig's Brahim Hadj-Moussa.
Put on monthly for the past seven years, the events are held in People Serving People's brightly decorated, cozy dining area, which serves about 100 families per day. The residents stay at the shelter to get their lives back on track, notes development coordinator Lauren Rimestad, and the place is packed with services like an on-site preschool, tutoring, after-school programs, employment counseling and job training programs.
Since its inception, the program has graduated 154 people, with some going on to the banquet departments of hotels like the Hilton, or university dining kitchens. Head chef Mike Seiler says he is ready to keep it going strong long into the future.
Although there's been a parade of local celebrity chefs as part of the monthly dinners, the recent event showed that the real chefs for change are the students like Austin, whose names aren't well known in culinary circles.
She ended her talk with a quick story about her first day at the program, in which she was asked to peel and cut two cases of squash. "I thought I was going to die," she said, with an enormous smile. "But from that point on, I realized the value of hard work, and of using my hands, and I knew everything would be different."
