One Question, Five Chefs: Reaching out and helping others
By Melissa Pasanen, • Burlington Free Press Correspondent • Friday, December 24, 2010
This time of year is one of celebration and abundance for many — and can be especially tough for those who might not be so lucky. We asked some local chefs to share how they have used their professional skills to help others, at any time of year. A delicious, hot, chef-made meal won’t solve everything, but it can definitely help brighten the day.
Tim Benzing, executive chef, Sweetwaters, Burlington
“This is my third year of running the Sweetwaters Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a big event. We serve between 800 and 1,000 people. That’s as many customers as we see on a rocking summer Saturday night. My role is to contact our food suppliers to get donations to help, although we still foot a big piece of it. Then I coordinate staff and volunteers for all the prep, organization, cooking and serving. Guests come from all over Chittenden County. We work with COTS and Howard Mental Health and United Way to get the word out and get people here. It runs the gamut: there are elderly people and people who just don’t have anyone to have Thanksgiving with. We do turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings: mashed potato, vegetables, gravy, homemade cranberry sauce. I make the stuffing my mother made and everything is all served table service. For many of the guests who come, it’s probably their once-a-year-time to be served like our other guests always are.
Families of the people who are here helping come and help, too. Like my kids end up here. They’re 8, 13 and 17. It’s really a blast to do it. It’s totally different than cooking for the average night at the restaurant. The energy it brings, the same volunteers every year, about 80 of them. I really look forward to that part, to reconnecting with them. My whole back-of-the-house staff volunteers in some shape or form and this year I had three guys who gave up their whole Thanksgiving to be here. It’s just really nice to see the community reach out and be able to bring this experience to people who need it. It’s nice to see them take a load off for the afternoon and get something special. A lot of people take for granted what they have. These people have basic needs that are not being met. It’s shocking in a way. It’s really unfortunate that it takes Thanksgiving to have people realize that there’s this need.”
Michael Clauss, executive chef, Bluebird Tavern, Burlington
“It wasn’t volunteer, but I did work for a company for nine months after Katrina where we were cooking for volunteers who had gone down there to help after the hurricane. I was lucky to have the opportunity to go work for this company and do something good and rewarding at the same time. I was there with two other friends who are also local chefs, Shawn Calley and Shannon Bergeron, who are both now cooking at The Essex. We cooked for the National Guard and groups from Habitat for Humanity and the Red Cross and church groups who were all down helping with the cleanup. It was something different and it was fun and just really rewarding, too.
I went down about a month after Katrina and spent the first two months outside Baton Rouge and then we moved to a volunteer camp right outside New Orleans. It was extremely different than restaurant cooking: We were serving 1,500 at breakfast and dinner, making fresh turkey, meatloaf, ribs, prime rib. We fed them well, pretty much everything made from scratch. We cooked and we served, too, cafeteria-style. We met and worked with a lot of people from the area, people who had worked at the restaurants in New Orleans and the casinos in Mississippi, who’d all been displaced. They got wiped out. Wherever we went, whatever we did, people would ask where we were from and everyone was always very thankful that we were there. Every day people were so thankful.”
Brian Dermody, senior chef-instructor, Community Kitchen of Vermont at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, Burlington
“Community Kitchen is essentially a 13-week training program for people who have not worked in commercial dining services and who need job skills to move themselves ahead. They generally have a history of unemployment or underemployment. Our students, since January 2009, have put out over 41,000 portions of food for the breakfast program at the food shelf and for distribution to the needy throughout our community. Their lives are tough, but somehow they end up feeling a lot better because they’re helping other people. Not only are they preparing for a career, but they’re helping others, too. It’s an optimistic feeling.
I basically started as an hourly person in dining services just like they will after completing the program. I was way more unskilled than they will be. After working my way up to become a director of dining services at colleges and universities and after 30 years of having a great career, I wanted to give back to the community. You open the doors every day to a wave of need. It can be pretty shocking. It feels really good to me personally, but I had no idea. I wasn’t prepared to see it. But I teach the students that it’s no different working here than elsewhere. You give these people the best customer service you can. A customer is a customer and that’s all there is to it.”
Stephanie Pixley, 2nd year AOS culinary arts student, New England Culinary Institute, Montpelier
“Last year when I was living in Burlington and commuting to NECI, I was looking for somewhere to do my volunteer requirement for school. The (Chittenden Emergency) Food Shelf was near where I lived so it was easy to get to and it worked for my schedule. I could go over there early in the morning at 5 a.m. and help cook breakfast and lunch. I only had to do two hours for school, but I really liked it, so I stuck with it and ended up going about a half a dozen times until I couldn’t fit it into my schedule anymore. The people who worked there were really great and it was a totally different environment than school. It forced me to be creative and think on my feet; you have to work with what you’ve got there. When I was younger I did help at a soup kitchen with my youth group and I’m a pretty aware and globally wise person. But I was still surprised to see some families and other people come there who didn’t fit my idea of who would come to a food shelf. It was really kind of cool how people would hang out there once they’d eaten, kind of like a school cafeteria. I was surprised at how they’d talk and laugh with their friends.
This year I also helped out with a program at the Montpelier public library called “Cooking and Booking.” A couple other students and I made applesauce with the kids and the librarian read some books. We peeled the apples with one of those hand-crank things and we came in full brigade (chef whites). The kids loved that. It was really cool. We also cut out apple shapes and did prints, like with potatoes, and we did an apple-tasting with them. I think the kids loved that, too. I think they felt important that students from culinary school were there in their chef whites asking what they thought.”
Franke Salese, owner, Junior’s, Burlington and Colchester
“Our Christmas meal started six years ago. Honestly, it was a year my boys and daughter were going down to New Jersey to see their mom for Christmas and I had a lot of invitations to go places, but I decided to do this. I knew Sweetwaters did Thanksgiving and I thought this was a niche that could be filled. I thought this was something I could do. We start that day and make everything hot and fresh. We do baked ziti, ham, salads, meatballs, lasagna. We work with Costco to get their extra pies, fruit, bread and muffins. We put it all out cafeteria-style. Last year we served 200. It’s just a wonderful time. We see some of the same faces each year. The first couple years, we had pregnant women come and now we have them with their kids running around. Last year, we moved it from Colchester to the Burlington restaurant to be more central and we work with the food shelf to get their clients here. We serve from noon to 3 p.m. Every year we have employees and other volunteers, about 12 to 15, who help make it happen. And when my kids are in town, they’ll be here, too. We have so many volunteer offers, we have to turn them away. That shows what type of people we have in Vermont. We all work together to try to do good things. It’s a cliche I know, but it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It really does. Especially seeing the kids. I love to see kids happy. Their parents are so grateful, really appreciative. I just believe whatever you put into life, you get out of it.”
One Question, Five Chefs is an occasional column in which we will ask five local chefs or restaurant owners the same question. Feel free to send us any burning question you’ve always wanted to ask a chef and we might feature your question in a future column. Please include your name, town of residence and daytime phone number and send to
