The culinary class, taught by Chef Donell Turner, is one of the many CTE courses offered at Puyallup High School. Although many expect the course to just be about learning how to cook, the focus is to keep a progression of the theories and methods surrounding cooking, as well as learning to be good employees and employers in the culinary field in the future. 

The class tries to have a big overlook of everything that can be related to restaurant culture and culinary, and it opens a lot of options, especially because it’s a college course.  

“Some students want to go on to a front of the house or back of the house kind of restaurant,” Turner said.  

According to Turner, since hospitality and tourism have thousands of jobs, the course can be connected to tons of other things.  

 “It can be for anyone who has a passion for organizing or ordering, or accounting, or decorating. It can be anything from magazine covers, to doing vlogs, so there’s many aspects.” Turner said.  

A regular period in the classroom changes depending on the student’s skill level. For beginners, it’s a matter of learning the process and cooking more and more as time goes by. For advanced students, the class is learning to organize themselves just like a restaurant and work on a menu.  

Vijay Brown, a junior in the advanced culinary class, describes what a period in culinary looks like.  

“For us, we usually start a period getting changed up into our aprons, then we’ll look at what’s on the board to see if we have to cook for bistro, or just other things coming up,” Brown said. 

The advanced class functions like a work base.  

“All our formative just kind of goes into that service or into that production lab of making the food and that sort of thing and there are steps that we take, and then it’s basically, ‘Tada!’ and that’s what they’re graded on,” Turner said.  

Beginner students often struggle to follow all the procedures without missing anything.  

“We have to make sure that steps aren’t missing. It is important that we’re not poisoning anyone or getting hurt. We’re working in a safe manner with a lot of students in the same area. So, safety is probably our first goal,” Turner said.  

The course can also help students learn valuable life skills, even if they don’t choose to go into the food service industry.  

“Besides the obvious stuff, I’ve learned a lot about fast thinking and partner work,” said Brown.   

Another advantage to culinary is that it can provide options for college.  

“We are articulated with three schools. We have Clover Park, Bates and Renton Tech. They do earn college credit from pastry to food safety, Garde-manger, which is like making sandwiches and soups and salads and all that. So, they do get credit for those schools,” Turner said.  

Junior Emily Waller says she plans on going to a nearby college that has a culinary arts program.  

“I specifically want to go into a pastry arts program because I enjoy doing pastries more than I do cooking, even though I love doing them both,” Waller said. “I plan on making my experience enlarged, because I currently experiment with gluten free products because my sister can’t have gluten. I’m experimenting with different recipes trying to make them look great.”

However, a lot of students don’t end up going on to culinary school, but the skills they learned from the class still give them an edge in whatever industry they do end up in. 

“I’ve had students that are managers at Cheesecake Factory, and they generally don’t stay dishwashers; they move on really quickly if they go the route of living up from job to job instead of going to culinary school,” Turner said.  

According to Waller, the course is not simply a class to take for the credits.  

“It’s actually a fun course and when you’re in the field and you learn to love it as much as I do, it can be really fun,” Waller said.