(light music) - What's up?

- (Shane) There's a big disconnect with kids on where your food's coming from, how to cook it, and how you can cook every day for yourself.

- Stage is a student culinary arts program that's an experiential learning based idea.

We invited all the students from Saint Paul Creative Arts Secondary School here to Saint Dinette.

Essentially what we're doing is we're taking students into the kitchen to work with top chefs, high end restaurants, learn front of house, back of house, basic cooking skills as well as the entrepreneurial spirit that it takes to run a restaurant.

It culminates in a student pop-up dinner.

So the students will be running the restaurant on May 21 and it's an all-student created menu.

Okay, so today guys we're making our ingredient list.

We're trying to get as much from the farmer's market as we can for Monday night's dinner.

Let's buy from local vendors, so we'll buy a bunch of honey from that same vendor we bought honey from last time.

Think about what's on the menu and what we can use and we'll get all that, we'll come back here and figure out what we want to do with the ingredients we've come up with today.

Alright?

Sound good?

Okay.

- (Everyone) Cheers!

- Here's to Monday.

- Cheers.

- Carpe Diem.

- Here we go.

Monday night guys.

Stage is a french term referred to as the apprentice of a restaurant.

So it's sort of a natural fit for us.

That'll be enough, because we're gonna split that 80 ways.

- It's been really cool to meet them where they're at and then watch what they're taking away from this because it's different for all of them.

Being able to connect and build these new relationships and teach them things that I know are just gonna make them stronger humans that are ready for the world.

So yes it's food, and yes it's service, and yes we're teaching them how to run a business but we're also teaching them how to work with each other and other people.

Look at that the little baby lettuce.

- I've definitely learned how to talk to people differently.

I mean definitely being out on the floor, waiting people, there's like posture, eye contact, all this different kind of stuff.

It's pushed me forward from where I was before, so I feel like it's really helped me out a lot.

- The communication skills, that was a little hard to do 'cause I'm not really, I don't talk to people a lot, I don't feel as shy as I used to, I was like, I don't wanna talk to anybody but now I'm like, yeah I can talk to everybody.

- You don't always get a chance to give back in the cooking community and you get to see the kids come in on good days and bad days and how food and us being together might change that for them.

And then there's the friendships that build.

You get to know them little by little and then a little bit of yourself opens up as well and there's this connect.

- I would say my favorite memory, or just my favorite thing about the program in general is family meals, it's just a really fun environment to be in with all of us eating together after we've made all the food that we are eating.

- So, we have everything we need.

Yes?

You went through it with Shane, you feel good about every course?

Yeah?

Confident?

Cool.

Dinner starts at six.

We'll do full lineup, so I'll have it all printed out for you and we'll just kind of talk about how that night's gonna go and what you need to know ahead of time.

Everyone will have a partner, so when you're in the kitchen or on the floor you'll be supported, but you'll also be completely in charge of whatever role we have you in.

So you guys will be managing every single role in the restaurant throughout the course of the day.

Sound good?

(upbeat music) (Yelling to one another) - What we have here is jerked quail - Yasss.

- A Jamaican dish.

It's spiced with all spice.

- (Mark) Okay, for dessert we have a pound cake.

- The kids came up with pretty much everything and what I did was just provide these bumpers for them to stay within.

You guys see rabbit pho on the menu and I didn't even come across talking about pho or talking about any of that they just wanted to do that.

They picked the vegetables for it, they picked they sauces to go with it to represent the family style and also all the cultures that we have within our group and it's just, I don't know, it's just super cool.

- (Mark) Hey guys.

Before we get started, just remember this is fun.

Listen, you guys already won.

You already made it and we're going to cross the finish line tonight in style.

You guys did phenomenal.

- (Laurel) Remember when we talked about the flow of service like the door's gonna get here first and then we sit down and it's making sure everyone has a drink, and then we get the first course in the window.

So the flow of business moves around the room and we kinda have to be prepared to be fluid and move with it.

- (Mark) Let's clean up and get going.

Nine minutes.

(restaurant commotion) - One minute.

- Hi.

Come on in.

(restaurant commotion) - (Mark) We're gonna have our student Chef Mikayla give you a little break down of what you're eating tonight.

- Hi mom.

Hi.

So the dish that you all are eating right now is a deconstructed veggie pizza.

So on the top is a fried rice paper to be the pizza crust I guess, the black powder is a vegetable ash to add color contrast, the greens are watercress, fennel, asparagus, carrots and radish sprouts tossed in a lemon vinegarette.

(clapping) - It's happened from James Beard nominated chefs coming in to talk to the students, all the way down to just us hanging out an extra 10 minutes to make sure that student has a ride home.

It's the level of people that have done this purely out of the bottom of their heart without financial compensation, without any of that, it's just unbelievable.

It's incredible to be able to know that you're giving back to someone's life.

To show them a life skill for instance like cooking where you know they'll take what they're learning here in this experience and it will be with them for the rest of their lives.

Whether they remember the names and the details is kind of irrelevant, it's the bigger picture of what the students take away from that experience.

And we can see it every single day as we watch the students grow and as they become their own chefs in a way over the course of 12 weeks to see that happen and to see just the confidence in these kids kind of develop and blossom, that's by far in a way the most rewarding part.

(restaurant commotion)