Скачать или смотреть Mott Culinary Arts Institute thrives in new building

By Tim Jagielo
Flint — On the third day they’ve been open this year, the lunch rush is heating up at the Applewood Café on Second and Saginaw streets.
These Mott Community College (MCC) students have donned the white culinary uniforms of the professionals, assuming every different role in a modern classy restaurant. From the sous chef to the hosts, students run the business. Patrons order, eat and pay like in the real world and students make all this happen.
Culinary arts students rotate though different kitchen and restaurant roles, spending a week in each.
This professionalism is nothing new for MCC’s Culinary Program, but this is a new facility that just opened for business last summer.
On Wednesday, the menu included oven-roasted pulled-pork sandwiches with appetizers like the date and chorizo rumaki drizzled with a balsamic-maple sauce.
While sous chef Emily Torok of Genesee Township kept the line working, Ethan Martinbianco, 18, of Fenton Township was the expediter, working to make sure plates were getting out to the servers on time, complete and looking presentable.
Chef Matt Cooper, also of Fenton Township, helps coordinate the program. He coached Martinbianco in proper presentation of the dates and chorizo before he handed the plate off to the server.
“The first thing I ever cooked was eggs and I fell in love with cooking,” Martinbianco said. “As soon as I started cooking I couldn’t stop.”
He loves the brand new facility and said the students take good care of it. “Someone spent millions on it,” he said. “The students couldn’t be more appreciative of it.”
The 36,000-square-foot facility cost $13 million overall. It includes the café, and Coffee Beanery.
Martinbianco is one of 300 students in the program of three associate degree programs. These include Baking and Pastry Arts, Culinary Arts and Food Services Management. There are two certificate programs — Professional Cooking and Professional baking.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the employment of chefs and head cooks to grow 11 percent between 2018 and 2028.
Cooper said the curriculum is the same as in the original facility, but delivery of the curriculum has been improved. The new facility is better equipped with state-of-the-art cooking equipment such as Rational brand multifunction ovens, a dry age room and a temperature-controlled wine cellar, along with a chocolates and confections lab.
He thinks with the new facility, they can grow the program and attract 500 students in the near future.
“The downtown location has brought us to the center of the new growth of Flint,” Cooper said, adding that sales at the café are expected to quadruple those of the previous winter term.
“I think we are also bringing people downtown that might not have otherwise come to see all of what this city has to offer.”