Gateway C.O.O.K.s Up Community

Arturo Franco-Camacho, chef de cuisine at the new Shell & Bones restaurant, was in a ceviche-making mood. The driving rain instilled in him a taste for the chilled, citrusy seafood soup. Several shrimp had been blanched and split. Freshly-squeezed orange juice was waiting in the wings. An assistant stood by to see what help Franco-Camacho needed.

But for some reason, it was taking him twice as long.

It wasn’t a midseason torpor. After endearing himself to New Haveners as the chef at Roomba from 1999 to 2007 and wowing new and old faces at Shell & Bones, he can assemble the soup in his sleep.

This time he wasn’t in a restaurant kitchen. He was teaching while cooking, instructing a group of students enrolled in Gateway Community College’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality program. The lesson he gave last week — a three-course dinner and wine pairing, for just short of 40 attendees — came as part of Gateway’s Chefs Of Our Kitchen, or C.O.O.K. series, a teaching-based fundraiser now in its fourth year at the college.

Conceived by Hospitality Management guru Stephen Fries, the program brings New Haven and Connecticut chefs into the college’s kitchens several times per year to prepare meals with groups of students, zeroing in on skills that range from chopping spring onions paper thin to folding flour into a tres leches cake without deflating the egg whites.

Starting with four chefs in 2012, the program has now grown to six, with guests such as Jacques Pepin, Jason Sobocinski, Claire Criscuolo, Bun Lai, and others in the lineup. For Fries, it’s about the relationship between professional and student, and how it can evolve in the kitchen and the community.

“When the students come in, they’re afraid to hold a knife — and then they get the skill to handle like a pro,” he said during the dinner, marveling at the plates — a ceviche with a surprise side of popcorn, rare steak on a yucca pancake, light cake with homemade banana gelato — as they came out from the kitchen. ​“It’s just wonderful to see how they’ve come from the bottom all the way up through being confident. When these students work with a chef that they might have heard about, and then they get to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them … it’s just so great to see that and the things that they learn from these chefs in such a short time.”

If a chef ​“sees a skill” in a student, he added, there are often internship and job opportunities waiting for them when they finish their culinary arts course of study.

That’s why these evenings are so important for students like Erik Bruder, who got his job at the Quinnipiac Club through the program, and Melvin Riley, a soon-to-retire state employee who was hoping to gain new skills and grow his gastronomic network.

“I want my next job to be fun,” he said. ​“I want it to be something that I enjoy doing, because working for the state of Connecticut … you become sensitive because over time you hear so much negative stuff. My next job, I want to do something that I enjoy. I enjoy cooking — I’ve always been told that I was a good chef, so I said: ​‘let me follow my dream and see where it takes me.’”

Two years in, he’s taking that to heart. ​“The most rewarding thing about being a chef is seeing your dish gone,” he said. ​“There’s nothing left.”

For Franco-Camacho, that’s the best part of the gig, too. ​“Being able to share what I know with people craving knowledge and people that want to try something different” still excites him, he said after the event. ​“Working with them reminds me of where you started. It brings you back to ground zero.”

“When you have students, you know it’s gonna take a little more time, because you have more communication,” he added. ​“You gotta explain things different … here basically you’re explaining step by step the whole recipe. But the way you learn cooking is by seeing … it’s a challenge, but it’s part of being an instructor.. It goes back to your commitment. What is your commitment in life? The day I no longer enjoy it, I’ll no longer do it.”

To listen to more voices from the evening, click on or download the audio above, a special ​“Kitchen Sync” short dedicated to the program. You can also find this episode by subscribing to the Independent’s new WNHH Arts Mix podcast.