Valley High School’s Bistro in a Classroom the Hottest Ticket in Town

Follow your nose. The memory-stoking aroma of home cooking you’re smelling isn’t coming from Valley High School’s cafeteria.

Not that there’s anything wrong with lunchroom fare. It’s more of a case that everything’s right with the cuisine dished up at Cafe V, Valley’s bistro in a classroom.

“Some, but not all, of the students will go on to culinary school, some take it because it’s fun, and some are going to be science teachers,” said Amanda Miller, who teaches culinary arts at Valley and oversees the operation of Cafe V.

“Every Friday, we kind of wage a battle against the food,” she said.

On this particular Friday, it was the delicious aroma of perhaps the moistest meatloaf ever served that was calling Cafe V patrons to come hither to get comfortable and enjoy some Southern hospitality.

Nothing teases the olfactory senses with memories of home like meatloaf, family dinner staple green bean casserole and gooey, cheesy potatoes. And pie. After a stick-to-your-ribs meal like this, you’d feel a little cheated if you didn’t get a piece of pie.

“This is as close as you can get to running a real restaurant when you’re still in high school.”

No worries. Head chefs for the week, seniors Mackenzie DiBlasi and Zoe Kisner, have that covered with a double-crusted berry pie that will be served with a dollop of whipped cream, a sprig of mint and an extra helping of top-drawer service, the kind you’d expect in a real bistro.

DiBlasi and Kisner are students in Miller’s hour-and-a-half long Culinary Arts class, a career and technical education class that gives students an experience that’s as close to running a real restaurant as possible in a public school setting.

“The class gives you a feel for what a real restuarant is like,” DiBlasi said. “This is as close as you can get to running a real restaurant when you’re still in high school.”

West Des Moines Schools Superintendent Peter Ansingh has eaten at Cafe V four times. He said he’s impressed not only with how well the class prepares students for culinary school or the job market, but also for life.

“The meals are very well prepared, and the waiters are very proper and very well versed on how the meal is prepared — professional, I guess, is the term I’d use,” he said.

Ansingh said interacting with strangers — the cafe isn’t open to the student body — builds students’ poise and self-confidence, reminds them that manners matter, and exposes them to the etiquette of formal dining.

This isn’t your grandmother’s home ec class
Reservations for a Friday seating at Cafe V are among the hottest tickets in town, backing up sometimes for weeks at a time.

While DiBlasi and Kisner settled on an entree and side dishes that remind them of the comforts of home, other students have turned the cafe into a gourmet burger joint, a tailgate party, or the set of a cooking show using five or fewer ingredients. They have tailored menus around the haute cuisine of a French bistro and zesty, earthy fare of an Italian ristorante, and Asian and Indonesian rain forest fare using mystical, aromatic spices.

Students were required to put together head chef books to be voted on by the class, with four menus developed for each of the themes. Miller has some rules about what the plates will look like — every menu has to have something green, and the main course should have an odd number of items.

She challenges students to include dishes that epitomize the themes — the way DiBlasi and Kisner did with the green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and Durkee french-fried onions that Aunt Martha always brings to holiday gatherings are almost universal in warming the cockles of hearts.

“I used a ton of my mom’s recipes and recipes that are common for everybody’s family,” DiBlasi said. “They’re all traditional, basic comfort food items and I think that comes across.”

The class offers eight hours of college credit transferable to Des Moines Area Community College, which offers an associate’s degree in its well-regarded Iowa Culinary Institute.

It’s licensed and subject to the same state health inspections as real restaurants. Profit from the $8 prix fixe menu goes back into the program. The cost to the school district is about $500 a semester. At the end of the semester, students use tips to eat at a fine dining restaurant in West Des Moines.

This isn’t their grandmothers’ home ec class — a mostly female dominion.

Instead, the program turns out graduates who have bridged the gap between science and foods. The interdisciplinary approach includes collaboration with marketing classes on menu and other collateral material design, and with business classes on creating a model that will cash flow.

Foods 1 and Foods 2 are prerequisites, and students must have achieved a B average. It is for students who are serious about a career in the food industry. Some students, like alumnus Molly Kisner, Zoe’s sister, discovered career aspirations.

Molly is in her second year at Johnson and Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts in Denver, where she’s earned associates degrees in baking and culinary arts and is working toward her bachelor’s degree in nutrition.

“I liked cooking,” she said, “but once I got a taste of a professional kitchen, I really liked it and wanted to learn more. It was definitely harder than I thought it would be."