McHenry County College Culinary Program Heating Up

The only thing that came through the door with any certainty that evening was snow.

It fell and swirled and blew into countless doorways across Chicago and when it was over, the area’s third largest snowfall had effectively cancelled the grand opening of Slàinte, the student-run restaurant at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake. What should have been a night of digging in was, instead, days of digging out.

“The next week I think we only had two customers and I thought, ‘Oh my God, if this goes on like this, (Slàinte) is not going to be very successful,'" said Executive Chef and MCC Culinary Management Instructor Thomas Kaltenecker.

Since then Mother Nature has cooperated and business has been brisk, thus making MCC’s culinary program a rapidly growing one.

After not having a culinary curriculum prior to the fall of 2009, MCC has opened Slàinte (pronounced “slawn-cha”) and added four part-time instructors including Chef Tina Drzal, Chef Pili Rios, Chef Simon Pedersen and Chef Sandra Johnston, who is also MCC’s Director of Food Service.

The program is expected to advance even further this spring when it gets accredited for an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Management. Currently, MCC only awards a Culinary Chef’s Assistant I certificate and Baking and Pastry certificate.

Slàinte Offers Extensive Menu

But to see just how far MCC has really come, one need not look any further than Slàinte itself.

On one recent Tuesday, more than 40 diners visited the 60-seat restaurant, sampling from a diverse menu that included Bacon Dijon-Wrapped Pork Loin or Scallop Pappardelle among the Tapas served entrees.

Other menu items include: a Tuna Poke, Brazilian Poppers, Chicken Skewers, Gazpacho, Seared Tuna Steak and for desert Black Forest Tiramisu or a slice of Chocolate Éclair Crepe Cake served with White Russian ice cream.

Slàinte, a Scottish toast “to good health”, keeps its diners fat in the one place preferred most: the wallet. At $7 each, the Twin Filet and Individual Steak Wellington are the most expensive items on the menu with the cheapest entrées, the Stuffed Chicken Parmesan and the Bison Slider, priced at $4 and $5, respectively. Additionally, every appetizer, soup, salad, small side or desert is $3 or $4 each.

“All the revenue from Slàinte goes back into our food budget,” Chef Thomas said. “I spend about $1,400 on the average menu and the first menu we broke even on or maybe about $30 bucks more. But our prices are so low that we’re really just getting back the cost.”

Menu Overhauled Three Times Per Semester

At Slàinte, Chef Thomas has his students switch kitchen positions every two weeks and overhaul the menu three times each semester.

Slainte’s current menu is the final one for the spring semester and the changeover has been anything but a cakewalk, as a late menu submission from one of their peers led to a lengthy finalization process followed by an eleventh-hour tasting and practice run. In some ways, Chef Thomas couldn’t have planned it or the blizzard any better.

“I think it couldn’t get much realer than what happened on Feb. 2,” said Chef Thomas, 34, who is from Wiener Neustadt, Austria and has worked in restaurants, resorts and casinos throughout Europe. “My students said, ‘What are we going to do now?’ I said, ’Well, what would you do in a real restaurant? If it snows outside, are you going to close the doors or stay open?’…So it is certainly hard to not teach at all, but in that case, where we didn’t have class, we actually learned something from the situation.”

Learning The Ropes

Also bearing the brunt of the recent menu changes were Slainte’s student servers, who also take turns bartending, serving and managing the front of house throughout the semester.

 “Last night was the tasting and that only gave the servers one day to learn everything,” said Chef Pedersen, a 2001 graduate of Huntley High School who, as MCC’s Restaurant Operations instructor, is responsible for Slàinte’s front-end operations. “There’s 23, 24 maybe 27 different dishes that they have to know inside and out for the guests. But that’s one night of staring at this menu and remembering everything that you tasted and making sure that you took good notes during your tasting.”

Chef Thomas agreed.

“We need to teach the students that this is what they signed up for in life,” he said. “Changes or menu knowledge and maybe coming up with a garnish quickly are things that happen on a daily basis. There are very few places where you can be a month ahead, plan a menu, and have everything written down. That’s awesome if you can do it, maybe at an institution place or hospital where it’s very rigid. But in a restaurant you have to be on your tippy toes. You have to be changing very quickly and go with trends and that’s something that we try to install in our students. Some take the bait and some not.”

The learning process for some MCC culinary students actually begins at Woodstock North High School, which, oddly enough, is also where the MCC program originated. According to the Chef Thomas, the opening of Woodstock North in 2008 prompted the school district to approach MCC about collaborating on a dual credit program in culinary studies. MCC then began working with Mike Zema, the Elgin Community College (ECC) Culinary Department’s Professor Emeritus, who in turn brought on Chef Thomas, a former student.

Initially it was Chef Thomas who taught at Woodstock North, but today the job belongs to Chef Simon, a former ECC classmate. High school students who pass Simon’s Culinary Skills I and II classes receive dual credit and can then enroll in MCC summer culinary classes.

Chef Simon also teaches Introduction to Hospitality at MCC where, he says, it gives him a chance to pass along his passion.

“This is an industry that changes so quickly that it’s a challenge to keep up with it,” he said, “And teaching students like this, who absorb everything like a sponge, it pushes me to want to learn even more because I want to keep giving them more. It’s reawakened my passion for the industry ten times more than I thought it was.”

For MCC’s culinary program to come this far so fast, Chef Thomas says it’s taken many proverbial cooks in the kitchen including former interim college president Brian Sager, current president Vicki Smith, the MCC board, and, of course, the McHenry County community.

“The community is what drives the enrollment,” Chef Thomas said. “If I don’t have students interested, this program would not be running so the community is a big, big part.”

Slàinte is open from 6 to 7:30 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays through Monday, May 2.