NEW ORLEANS TEEN CHEF EXCELS IN GAME-CHANGING CULINARY PROGRAM: 'I ALWAYS HAD A PASSION'
Taiquan Domino's eyes light up when he talks about that "little bit of cayenne," the pop that brightens his family's decades-old pork and sausage chili bean recipe. He's gleeful about explosions of flavor in his crawfish-laden Alfredo sauce and marvels over the glossy texture of simple zucchini, which can even make macaroni more interesting.
A senior at McDonogh 35 High School in New Orleans, Domino, 18, has long had the drive to become a professional chef. He started picking up tips at his mom's stovetop when he was in elementary school, learning how to make dishes like spaghetti and meat sauce, passed down from his great-greatgrandmother.
"I started cooking when I was about 7 years old," Domino said. "I always had a passion, all my life."
So when instructors from the fledgling New Orleans Career Center came to his class to recruit students for their new program in hospitality management and culinary arts -- a chance for him refine his technique and make real-world connections in the city's restaurant and catering scene -- well, it was a no-brainer.
"I was all in," Domino laughed.
Fast forward nearly two years to today, and Domino is set to become one of around 30 students to make history as the program's first graduating class of the center's Hospitality, Restaurant, and Tourism Academy, an initiative made possible in part with support from Alon Shaya, the renowned chef who cooked at Domenica and Shaya and now owns Saba in New Orleans, and who also serves on the center's board of directors.
The half-day program offers opportunity for students like Domino to not only earn industry credentials via hands-on experience from some of the best teachers, but also earn college credits through coursework with Delgado Community College.
Domino -- and the program he's enrolled in -- are bright spots of the New Orleans Career Center, according to Claire Jecklin, its executive director and co-founder, who helped start the program in 2017.
Jecklin said the center was finally founded after the Recovery School District and the Orleans Parish School Board saw the need for the decentralized district of charter schools to have a single career and technical education hub. They convened 24 experts in industry education, high school programs, philanthropy, government and economic development to make it happen.
The idea was to cater to "priority industries" identified by GNO, Inc. as having the most potential for future growth, Jecklin said, meaning students were likely to find jobs after their studies. There are currently 16 participating high schools.
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The first classes started in the 2018-19 school year with a focus in health care, with students learning skills like office management and general medicine from physicians, nurses and assistants, and an engineering and manufacturing program, where students learn about 3D printing, civil engineering and architecture.
For the 2019-20 school year, the center added the two-year hospitality and culinary arts program, Jecklin said. The first year, students learned in a hands-on environment, using the center's culinary lab and gaining real-time hospitality experience in the student-run enterprise, JavaScript Cafe.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the school went virtual. But it didn't stop hands-on instruction, with instructors like Brooke Berry, a 20-year hospitality industry veteran and chef, teaching classes online to students who received hand-delivered ingredients and materials at home.
The cooking outlet was a godsend to Domino, according to his mom, Kenyetta Domino. She said her son had struggled as his social life came to a standstill when students were sent home to learn virtually and he was falling behind in classes at McDonogh 35.
She told him he had to hold up his end of their deal: To stay in the specialty program, he had to keep his grades up in his regular school, too.
Ultimately, Domino delivered, and then some. Officials have boasted that he's set to become the first student to earn not only three industry certifications, but also nine college credits in hospitality from Delgado, equal to about a semester's worth of classes finished for free.
Looking forward, Domino wants to finish college and then get a graduate degree in business management so he can start his own restaurant in New Orleans.
His mom says a bonus is that he's taken over as family chef for her, his stepdad, brothers and stepsisters in their New Orleans East home. And he can out-cook her now. For instance, she was astounded to learn the secret behind his pasta Alfredo: fried shrimp, for richness, along with sautéed crawfish and a few pinches of crawfish boil seasoning, to spice it up.
"I never would have thought of that!" she said. "And now his spaghetti and meat sauce is really better than mine, too."
Read the original story on Nola.com here.