Southview grad finds right recipe with MCCC
Written by Nicholas Huenefeld | | letters@toledofreepress.comJohn Scott chose Monroe County Community College (MCCC) for his culinary education because of the program’s ability to give real-life, hands-on experience.
“The food that we’re taught now is being taken out to the public to see as opposed to books and tests,” he said.
Scott graduated from Sylvania Southview in 1998 and started attending Owens Community College. He left school and began working for various restaurants, gaining experience in baking, meat cutting, pastries, fine dining, comfort food and banquets.
But Scott wanted to stay competitive. The general manager he works for at South Briar Restaurant highly recommended the program at Monroe.
“My ultimate goal is to be an educator in culinary arts,” he said. “I want to teach people the fundamentals of cooking because I’ve worked in so many different fields [of culinary arts].”
The program at Monroe will help him do that.
“We’re hands on every day, 10 weeks out of 15 every semester,” said Vicki LaValle, culinary lab technician. “During those other five weeks, we have people come in and do demonstrations and lectures while making things the rest of the time.”
Scott said that LaValle and the program have helped him sharpen his finer pastries and European style desserts.
“John’s just been phenomenal,” said Kevin Thomas, who leads the culinary program at MCCC.
“The thing I admire about him is that he takes a classical French approach and wants to learn a lot about the fine parts of the French cuisine,” Thomas said.
And in an economy that isn’t looking the greatest, Scott is in a profession that is exploding, according to Thomas.
“It is an ever-growing profession, and there’s a lot of opportunities for people to expand or elaborate on careers they currently have by taking part in our program at Monroe,” he said.
