One of Newport’s oldest restaurants is not on the waterfront or Bellevue Avenue. The Colonial Dining Room, which opened in 1973, is a 60-seat restaurant open to the general public for breakfast and lunch. It is part of the culinary arts and hospitality program located at the Newport Area Career and Technical Center on the campus of Rogers High School in Newport.
The culinary arts program is a multiyear, nationally certified culinary arts and hospitality vocational, educational and career-orientated program affiliated with the National Restaurant Association and the Rhode Island Hospitality Educational Foundation.
Students attending the culinary arts program are from high schools in Newport, Middletown, Portsmouth, Tiverton, Little Compton and North Kingstown. Students that successfully complete the program will have a firm understanding of the food-service industry and will be able to continue their career either in the workforce or at a postsecondary culinary institution.
Students attend classes on a part-time basis, either in the morning or the afternoon. They take all their core and general educational classes at their home high schools.
The culinary arts program has a fully operating, professional kitchen and dining room facility directed by executive chef Steven Kalble. The kitchen and dining room are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and tools needed for the students’ educational experience.
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HANDS-ON LESSON: Executive chef Steven Kalble instructs students on a cookie-baking project in the culinary arts program of the Newport Area Career and Technical Center at Rogers High School in Newport.
/ COURTESY LARRY KRAMAN[/caption]
As part of the program, students can participate in the Taste of Newport, the venerable food and beverage tasting event and fundraiser held annually. It has been put on for 35 years by Child & Family of Newport County. Kalble said this year’s appearance was the second year in a row for the Colonial at the event. The students prepared and served bruschetta two ways – tomato-basil and white bean, truffle oil and sage. In addition, the crew served avocado and shrimp toast.
Kalble’s expertise is in baking. He holds a master’s degree in baking that he earned at Johnson & Wales University. The day I visited the facility, all hands for the afternoon class were turning out two different kinds of loaves – crusty baguettes that would have looked perfectly at home peeking out of a movie actor’s grocery shopping bag on the streets of New York, and round boules, those rotund peasant loaves that can only come from a commercial oven. Also, just out of the oven were some 350 Halloween cookies that would be brought to the students of Pell School in Newport to decorate. That type of project is literally NACTC’s bread and butter to pay expenses such as chef’s whites, the jacket and black pants that must be worn in the kitchen and dining room. The city provides no funding to the facility and the students must pay for their own uniforms – an expense that is beyond several of the students who live below the poverty line.
The cash flow is a tangible benefit of the program. There are plenty of intangibles. As Kalble puts it, “Not only is it academics, it’s hands-on too.” Students are servers, cashiers, line chefs, expeditors – a supervisor chef who checks each order before it leaves the kitchen for accuracy and appearance. “Nothing leaves the kitchen unless it is perfect!” Kalbe said.
The Colonial has a state-of-the-art, point-of-sale ordering and cash-management software system, the same type found in commercial restaurants.
“It is completely student-run,” Kalbe said.
The students are immersed in the learning of “soft skills” – making change, setting and busing tables, taking customers’ orders, and what may be the most invaluable skill they will learn – interacting with people on an interpersonal basis, face to face with no electronic devices in the mix.
Bruce Newbury’s Dining Out radio talk show is heard Saturdays at 11 a.m. on 1540 AM WADK, through various mobile applications and via smart speaker. Email Bruce at Bruce@brucenewbury.com.
