York Town News
Kids cooking up a storm with York's Youth Enrichment Programs
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Elliot Friar, 11, and mom, Michelle, prepare to enjoy a gourmet meal made by Elliot and a group of 11 other local children under the tutelage of Stolen Menu Café Chef Karl Mace as part of the York Parks and Recreations Youth Enrichment Programs.
Photo by Virginia L. Woodwell
Members of York's first-ever Youth Enrichment Program summer cooking camp gather in the kitchen of the Stolen Menu Café to check out the food they prepared for a gourmet dinner served to family and friends
Photo by Virginia L. Woodwell
Inside, however, 36 guests sat awaiting a four-course, candlelit gourmet dinner.
The occasion was the fifth and final day of a course for kids on cooking, one of the York Parks and Recreation Department's summer Youth Enrichment Programs.
In it, 12 youngsters - six girls and six boys, ranging in age from eight to 12, with one five-year-old - had spent an hour each day for four days with Stolen Menu Chef Karl Mace learning how to plan and cook a meal.
The 36 people waiting at tables with knives and forks poised on the fifth day were their invited guests, parents and assorted siblings ready to sample the results.
"He loves to cook," said Melanie Goddard, mother of Cameron Goddard, 11, one of the participating youngsters.
Her son, white apron tied around his middle, joined his classmates in delivering up the first course, a gazpacho soup.
"He was so excited about this!" she added. "He was in awe of Karl, and even kept a notebook to record what he was learning."
Among the students, Cameron may have been the exception because, according to Chef Karl, he knows already that he wants to be a chef.
But, according to Melanie Goddard and the other parents, Cameron was far from alone in his enthusiasm for the course.
"The kids were all excited," she said, "they were totally jazzed."
And she was echoed by David Rundlett, who was there with his daughters May, 5, Gabrielle, 8, and Sage, 10, together with their mother, Jennifer. David Rundlett spoke of the enthusiasm with which Sage came home from the class each night, saying, warmly, "It was very nice. She was very excited."
Following the gazpacho on the menu were a salad, a pork-and-sirloin meatloaf stuffed with spinach and provolone cheese and a dessert of cupcakes with ice cream.
"I learned what some of them don't like," he said, joking. "One of them doesn't like meatloaf, but that's going to change tonight."
Mace confessed that, given the limits of time, he'd made the dessert, but the rest of the meal, he reported, had been planned and executed by the kids, working under his tutelage from 5 to 6 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and focusing on a different course each night.
Mace called the kids' attention in the kitchen "unbelievable," and said, "They really got into it."
Mace, who is Bailey's son, served as chef at the York Harbor Inn from 1997 to 1999, and, prior to the opening of the Stolen Menu Café last year, was working as a chef at various venues in Georgia.
"You guys are actually preparing me," he said to the crowd in brief remarks before dinner was served, a reference to the fact that he and his wife, Kami, have two children, Keegan, 3, and Kyler, eight months.
The course and the Youth Enrichment Program itself were the brainchildren of coordinators Gary Phipps and Pam Lombardi, and were conceived, said Lombardi in a telephone interview, as alternatives to more traditional summer programs in sports.
Other Youth Enrichment courses, called "camps," offered this summer focused on subjects like computers, painting in watercolors, photography and the wilderness experience, "a really nice variety," said Phipps, who had just come from the conclusion of the wilderness camp to be present and an active participant in staging the dinner.
Lombardi noted that The Stolen Menu program represented the first time a "camp" had been held in a restaurant, and she applauded that arrangement as representing excellent community relations.
Bailey said that arrangement came about because her son had taught some cooking classes in York's Adult and Community Education program, and had been a student of Phipps, who teaches at York High School.
Phipps and Bailey had also grown up together, he said, so the connections were easily arranged.
The youngsters participating in the cooking camp were, in addition to Cameron and Sage, Sadie Arsenault, 8, Drew Binger, 11, Madelyn Dignam, 9, Elliot Friar, 11, May Hoover, 5, Jacob Johnson, 12, Alec Jordan, 11, Amanda Offermann, 8, Sarah Tardiff, 10, and Josh Wilhite, 9.
