Three high school students, dressed in blue chef hats and spotless white jackets, waited patiently by the glass doors of the Hedrick Test Kitchen on Sunday. In the hours to follow, hundreds of Hill residents would sample the fresh dishes they had prepared.
The students – Jose Landaverde, Maribel Sandoval and Esther Zegura – are all seniors from West Adams Preparatory High School, which is about 10 miles east of UCLA. They cooked at UCLA in preparation for the finals of Cooking Up Change, a national cooking competition in which they will test their dishes against eight other schools at a June event in Washington, D.C.
The students were invited to prepare their dishes for Hill residents and learn from UCLA chefs, because UCLA dining representatives were impressed with the high school’s emphasis on healthy meals.
In January, the three students passed the first round of a competition between six teams of Los Angeles Unified School District students, said Alex Macias, the assistant director of dining at UCLA who oversees the Test Kitchen.
At the Test Kitchen, the West Adams students prepared modified versions of the recipes they will cook in Washington to improve their cooking skills in preparation for the final round of the competition, Macias said.
Landaverde prepared a Tex-Mex bowl, inspired by the mixture of cultures it represents, he said.
Both Landaverde and Zegura said they want to pursue culinary arts after high school.
“My goal is to own a bakery, using nutritional ingredients instead of the unhealthy sugars you always see,” said Zegura, who helped prepare a pear and raisin “Dulce di Vetro” dessert.
Organizers of UCLA’s Healthy Campus Initiative heard about the high schoolers after listening to a LAUSD representative speak about their recent menu upgrades. The school district recently started purchasing most of its food from local areas, said Dr. Wendy Slusser, an associate professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the head of diet and nutrition for the Healthy Campus Initiative.
“We visited them at school and sampled the dishes, which we loved,” she said.
The event at UCLA was designed to engage the chefs to improve their skills and learn about healthy eating, Slusser added.
Before the dining hall opened on Sunday, the high school students met with Test Kitchen culinary staff and prepared the ingredients for their dishes while being instructed on cooking techniques. Inviting the high school students to UCLA was also beneficial for dining services staff by helping them understand the eating trends of incoming freshmen, Macias said.
While the Cooking Up Change competition has rigid parameters, there is more freedom for experimentation at the Test Kitchen, Macias said. For example, fresh, rather than canned, pears are used at Hedrick, and agave nectar is chosen in place of sugar, he added.
As the restaurant doors opened and diners filed in, the West Adams chefs said they were pleased by the student feedback. They walked around, speaking to students about their dining experience.
Jeremy Birch, a second-year physiological sciences student, said he was unaware of the student chef event when he decided to eat at Hedrick, choosing to visit because the menu looked appealing online.
Test Kitchen employees read feedback submitted by students about the quality of each dish, Macias said. If the students’ recipes are well received, they will be included in the menus for the soon-to-open Sproul residential restaurant, he added. This possibility especially excited Landaverde, who said he hopes to transfer to UCLA to study business and nutrition after community college.
“I used to only cook food at home – food from my country of El Salvador,” Landaverde said. “My goal is to open an Italian restaurant, and now, being at UCLA, I feel like that can happen.”