Walter Potenza has made his bread off of feeding people. Now, the renowned chef and TV personality is looking to give people the chance to feed themselves.
Potenza, who owns Aquaviva on Atwells Avenue in Providence and is known for his “Chef Walter” cable TV show, plans to bring a cooking school to the city of Pawtucket. The school, which Potenza estimates will cost $2 million to build, is slated to open in 2007 and will likely be called Chef Walter’s Cooking School, he said.
For Leaders Who Don't Have Time to Get Sick
Top performers guard their calendars, delegate relentlessly and optimize every hour of the day. Health,…
Learn More
The project will rehabilitate the former Old Colony Bank, at 347 Main St. Built in 1927, the historic building also will house a natural food store and a café, Potenza said.
The second floor of the 16,500-square foot building will include space for seminars and wine tastings, while the third floor will include commercial office space.
Potenza, who already teaches classes in his restaurant for people looking to make cooking their hobby, said he hopes to use the school to entice people to enter the culinary world. He will offer two types of classes. One will be designed for amateurs looking for cooking education and will be offered one lesson at a time. The other, Potenza said, is a “pre-culinary” course. That 90-day class will allow students to see if they want to go into the culinary field before going to college for it.
Describing the venture as “a project more of passion than of business,” he said the school will coincide with an after-school program he will run in Pawtucket’s high schools where students will prepare food for the following day.
He said he hopes both the school and the program not only will give people direction, but help change eating habits.
“I like essentially to go after the lifestyle of foods rather than just feeding people,” Potenza said. “Restaurants feed people. What I’m trying to do right now is create a lifestyle teaching people how to eat better, how to buy better ingredients and teaching children how to be better in terms of food.”
Herbert Weiss, Pawtucket’s economic and cultural affairs officer, said Potenza’s decision to locate a school in the city helps solidify Pawtucket’s standing as a growing arts community.
Already, former mills in the city have been rehabbed and converted into artist spaces. The Potenza school continues in that tradition, he said.
“This is an example of Mayor James E. Doyle’s arts initiative being tangibly successful,” Weiss said.
