SOUTH PORTLAND — For almost 40 years, the culinary arts students at Southern Maine Community College have been offering Portland-area residents a delicious bargain.

Three days a week, the students toil in their culinary “laboratories” on campus to create a gourmet lunch, an experience that provides them with the critical skills they’ll need to launch their careers in the food-service industry.

The public gets to eat their efforts — four courses for the rock-bottom price of $12 – in the culinary arts dining room overlooking the ocean. (Read our story about the program here: http://bit.ly/czLFkq.)

Now the school is extending the deal to dinner beginning Nov. 3. Same price, same location, same number of courses.

Dinner seatings will be begin at 6:30 p.m. every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday until the semester ends, then will start again in January. The dinner service will last until about 8:30 p.m.

Reservations are being taken now at 741-5612 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. On Oct. 26, the dinner reservation line hours will change to 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.

“It will be nice to be able to expand,” said chef Anthony Poulin, the new chair of the culinary arts department. “Hopefully, it will be popular. It will be a whole new demographic of people.”

Former chair Wilfred Beriau, who is still an instructor at the school, said lunch patrons have been asking for a dinner service “for as long as I can remember.”

Beriau said the new dinner service is a reflection of the growth of the culinary arts department, which has seen enrollment rise by 37 percent over the past couple of years.

“We’re getting so busy, in order to maintain what we think is the correct student-teacher ratio, we put an extra dinner and an extra dining room class on at night as an option for the students so it would eliminate classes with too many students,” Beriau said. “That kind of waters down the experience when the student-teacher ratio is too high.”

The dining services class will be supported by an advanced cooking specialties class; a freshman class that does all the meat, fish and poultry fabrication; a basic culinary fundamentals class that prepares soups, salads and dressings; and a senior pastry and baking class that prepares desserts.

“We have a total symbiotic relationship here,” Beriau said. “Like in a big hotel, all our departments are related. But that’s the way a big kitchen, a food service operation, runs. Each department contributes to the service of a guest in some way.”

The menu will change weekly. As with the luncheon service, the dinner service will have a theme that focuses on, for example, Asian, Italian or French cuisine. Each course includes more than one option, and for entrees, there are usually four or five choices.

“Best buy in town,” Beriau said.

 

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at: mgoad@pressherald.com

 

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