Common Ground: The Classroom where the Cooks are Kids

June 2006 | Naturally Tasty

The Classroom where the Cooks are Kids

Kitchen on Fire ignites the East Bay cooking scene

By Andrea Blum

Is it only in Berkeley that kids like anchovies in their Caesar salads? That acquired taste (usually reserved for adults) seemed to hit a cord among the dozen or so young attendees in an Americana cooking class at Kitchen on Fire, a new cooking school for all ages next door to César’s restaurant in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. It’s a Sunday afternoon and Sofiya Lyalo, a six-year-old dressed in a sparkly pink tank top and a white plastic apron, stands on chair to reach a mixing bowl. She shows off a Band-Aid wrapped neatly around her finger and explains that she accidentally scrapped her knuckle while grating lemons for an apple cobbler.

This being Berkeley, the children groan of disappointment upon hearing that the Caesar dressing on the class menu will not include anchovies. Despite this setback, Sofiya, the miniature chef with the bandaged pinky, eagerly joins the other children enraptured by the quest to create the perfect cobbler.

Kitchen on Fire — decked out in fire-engine red and accessorized with Füri gusto grip knives and state-of-the-art appliances — sits atop the Epicurious Garden, the latest addition to this food-centric North Berkeley neighborhood. The building, a former TV and appliance shop, sat empty for years. Now it’s a high-end food court offering organic dim sum, soups, sushi, ice cream, chocolate and a pizza-like flatbread called socca. But instead getting the provisions ready made downstairs, upstairs you can learn make them yourself. At Kitchen on Fire, students learn basic skills like handling knives and cooking soups and stocks.

The classroom meets the table

“Mike C.” is one of Kitchen on Fire’s two high-energy founders. A 28-year-old chef with a Daliesque look, he is the former director of Sur La Table’s cooking classes. Mike grew up tending organic gardens in New York State with his father who also fashioned homemade wine from local grapes. He teamed up with Olivier “Chef Olive” Said, a 45-year-old French-Algerian restaurateur and managing partner of César restaurant. Said comes from five generations of foodies. Mike and Olivier built this classroom for cooks with their own hands and opened in April with the vision of bringing the family back to the dinner table — the traditional venue for good food, communication and inspiration. It doesn’t even matter if the food’s not 100% organic.

“It’s better to eat fresh food even if it’s not organic than none at all,” says Said with his thick French accent and a sly wink. But that doesn’t stop them from using fair-trade ingredients or teaching what it means for farmers and food-workers to get a living wage. It doesn’t stop them from slipping the word “organic” into the discourse or gently urging the students to cook from scratch.

Berkeley has become a national inspiration for organic and sustainable menus in restaurants and it also has emerged as a leader in the new version of home economics that includes providing farming outreach programs for schools and delivering fresh produce underserved communities. Jeffery Smith, executive director of From the Garden to the Table, was sitting in on the Sunday class. Smith runs a health and sustainable food education program for at-risk Bay Area youth and he hopes to work with the two chefs who keep Kitchen on Fire stoked. Smith says he has kids who think pizza comes from a telephone and that milk comes from a refrigerator. “They have never even seen lettuce grown and have no idea where their food comes from,” he said.

Although Kitchen on Fire focuses on teaching children, it’s also open to adults who want to cook but might lack the inspiration or know-how. Some classes are taught by big-name chefs and the authors of best-selling cookbooks. Jean Pierre Moullé, the famed chef from Chez Panisse, recently showed up to teach “the art of a good picnic” and demonstrate the pleasures of outdoor dining.

Mike C. plans to take students on day trips to SF’s Chinatown that will include private tea tastings. “We want to show the real Chinatown — the cultural side — where to shop for fish, or find tea and spices.” Mike C. emphasizes that likes to teach the “why” of cooking so students come to understand the science of food. (One of his favorite reads is the book What Einstein Told his Cook.)

Kids in the kitchen

Today he is explaining how a binder is used to make oil and water mix and how roux thickens and flavors. When he asks the children how many eat macaroni and cheese from a box, all hands go up. They look perplexed, though, when he asks why the cheese inside comes in a powder.

“Have you ever seen cheese already shredded in a bag at the store?” He asks. “Do you ever wonder why it doesn’t stick together?” He pauses dramatically before explaining. “It has wax on it. You’re eating candle cheese!”

“Ewwwe!” the children chorus in disgust.

The moral: Shred your own cheese. And here’s how you do it.

Soon the kitchen is abuzz. In one corner, Elijah, who said he was “five-and-a-quarter,” stirred organic elbow pasta. His older brother, Colin, with the guidance Chef Olive, began the steps of making roux for the macaroni and cheese. They melted butter on the stovetop and whisked in the flour. Another trio, hovering over stainless steel bowls, tore apart romaine leaves for a salad.

Linda Schweidel, a parent volunteer at the Berkeley Arts Magnet School, said cooking with kids instills confidence and a sense of empowerment. “It’s a thing they will think back on with nostalgia.” Instead of having memories of McDonalds, she said, they would have memories of homemade macaroni and cheese cooked in a kitchen.

After two hours, as the cooking comes to a close, the kids turn their chairs into tables, grab plates and serve themselves generous helpings of grilled sandwiches, salad and elbow and quinoa pasta. The whirlwind calms and Sofiya shares a round of hugs with her fellow chefs. Chef Olive looks down on the scene and smiles broadly: “The Gourmet Ghetto was sleeping. Now we’re going to wake it up.”

Andrea Blum is CG’s young-at-heart food columnist.

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