Stockbridge — Deep within the Red Lion Inn, the kitchen hums with work and music, and vats of stock and chicken potpie filling bubble along with cauldrons and ovens full of other comforting wonders.
It is the grey stretch between fall colors and Christmas preparations, and the town is pregnant with holiday cheer. The lobby is quiet but for a few off-season visitors sipping drinks and petting one of the resident cats. But work your way through the maze of the 200-year old hotel, you arrive in the vast kitchen, where in a prep station, professional chefs are helping handful of young culinary apprentices learn to cook and cook well.
RSYP Culinary Arts apprentices, from left: Tristan Gray, Katrina Hodes, Jennaya Jones, Colby Padget and Austin Herzog. Photo: Heather Bellow
In the hours before the dinner rush, the students are working on chicken pot pie and sweet potato hash, just one of many meals they’ve learned to prepare during their apprenticeship through Railroad Street Youth Project (RSYP), which coordinates apprentice programs for 14- to 26-year-olds in culinary arts, photography, cosmetology and massage. RSYP’s apprentice career coordinator Caitlin Hugel, hopes to soon add computer programming, theatre, and farming to the mix. RSYP also organizes individual custom apprenticeships, to “try to create what we don’t offer.”
Once a week this culinary group comes to the Red Lion, which has hosted the 8-week program since its inception in 2006. This year students work under the oversight and mentoring of Red Lion chef de cuisine Adam Brassard; they also spend one day a week at Firefly in Lenox under executive chef, Zee Vassos. Everything students learn to cook prepares them for the 5-course, 150 plate dinner which they and their mentors pull together for the RSYP’s Annual Culinary Arts Dinner next Monday, December 7 at Crissey Farm in Great Barrington.
In the Red Lion kitchen, five apprentices studiously chop sweet potatoes and onions for the hash. As she works, Katrina Hodes, who moved to the Berkshires from Los Angeles to attend CIP (College Internship Program) in Lee, says all she knew how to make before she joined the culinary program were eggs and toast.
“I love that,” says chef Brassard. “The egg inside the hole in the toast.”
Everyone in the room agrees; an egg in a hole is a good thing.
Now when Hodes, 20, returns home to visit her mother, she makes salads and more interesting food, she says. Brassard works his way into her station to the give the group an onion-slicing lesson.
Other students grew up here. Jennaya Jones, 17, goes to Lee High and is applying to culinary schools. Tristan Gray, 21, was for a while a “raw vegan,” he said, who cooked that way for his family “for a long time.” He’s lived in Equador, and he wants to go to culinary school, too.
Amanda DiCroce is coming in and out of the prep area with various containers. She settles to chop a tomato for burgers. At 26, DiCroce is seasoned. She’s been at the Red Lion for five years after her RSYP apprenticeships. “I’ve always cooked my whole life,” she says.
Austin Herzig and Amanda DiCroce. Amanda works at the Red Lion now after her apprenticeships.
Austin Herzig is also 26. He’s been here since 2012, when he moved from South Africa, also to attend CIP after he was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. “I cook but it takes me forever, so learning new styles is great — like learning to cut an onion differently,” he said. “A lot that I cook involves an onion.”
Herzig is getting a certificate in human services from Berkshire Community College. His next move is to England, where he wants to study social work, or possibly become a missionary. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.
Hugel, who began as an AmeriCorp volunteer, says RSYP connects with all the high schools and education centers in the area. She said many culinary apprentices go on to work in restaurants.
RSYP Executive Director Ananda Timpane says the culinary program exemplifies what the organization’s mission is all about, adding that it fills a critical void in the Berkshires. “It’s an answer to a problem that has arisen in many rural communities throughout Massachusetts and across the country: where do youth go when they have nowhere else to go? Where can they spend time in a safe, engaging space that allows them the freedom and encouragement they need to develop their skills, learn how to be responsible, and become leaders in their community?”
Hugel says many of RYSP’s apprentices don’t thrive in “traditional classrooms.” This program, she says, “motivates them” through “discovery.”
“You have to work in a kitchen first,” Brassard said as he cuts into a tray of just-made marshmallows soon headed for a hot cocoa cart in the hotel. The culinary program helps them decide if they “actually want it, as opposed to just seeing it.”
This is Brassard’s fourth year mentoring, his 10th or 12th class of students, he says, adding that it’s “fun because the whole kitchen staff gets involved.”
Tristan Gray stirs chicken pot pie filling. Photo: Heather Bellow
“The first day they learn knife skills, then they make something that’s going to lead up the dinner so they know what to expect,” said Brassard, who has a tattoo on the inside of his wrist that says “EAT.”
Hugel says a barometer of the program’s success is that participants keep coming back “over and over again, and are making real connections with their mentors.”
Other mentor chefs over the years include Brian Alberg, also of Red Lion, Dan Smith of John Andrews Restaurant, and Daire Rooney of Allium.
Steve Root started the program in 2006 while working at RSYP. “In the zeitgeist cooking shows the chefs were becoming very mainstream and there were a number of regular kids at RSYP interested in those things.” Root said because of his background as a cook, “I could probably teach a cooking class on basic cooking skills if we had enough interest and could find a space to do it.
“As it happened,” Root added, “Steve Picheny, who owned Pearl’s [restaurant], had recently had a conversation about getting involved with the youth project…he offered us the use of the restaurant kitchen. His chef, Ryan Bentley, and his head waiter, Tim Buchanan, both volunteered their time to help organize and start classes.”
It went from there. Lots of young people signed up and the program was off to a strong start.
“The thing I loved most,” Root said, “was working with the kids and watching them progress in skill, watching someone who has never held a knife before going on to preparing a coursed banquet is pretty awesome.”
Firefly executive chef and RSYP mentor Zee Vassos with RSYP apprentice career coordinator Caitlin Hugel. Photo: Heather Bellow
Firefly chef de cuisine Zee Vassos climbed up the culinary ranks similarly, though not through RSYP. As a teenager, the West Stockbridge native started bussing tables and worked his way through kitchens here and in Boston before coming back to the Berkshires to work at Firefly.
“This program is the great equalizer,” Vassos said. “Everyone comes in with the same level of skill,” he said. And by the end, their skills are strong enough to plate 150 dinners, “a challenge even for professional chefs.”
Vassos, who started working with RSYP apprentices four years ago (his wife Jocelyn is RSYP’s photography mentor, and was the apprenticeship coordinator before Hugel), says at first he was “intimidated by teaching, though I’ve cooked my whole life.”
“I didn’t think of myself as a teacher,” he adds. “But I love learning from students. I get a fresh new perspective.”
In the main kitchen area, Tristan Gray stirs a vat of chicken potpie filling, while two cooks watch Brassard cut the marshmallows. The petit yet powerful DiCroce moves an enormous pot of chicken soup.
Hugel smiles, noting the advantages of her job. “There’s no problem getting fed really good food.”
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Tickets to the Annual Culinary Arts Celebration are $125 per person. Tables are also available for purchase. To purchase tickets or learn more about how you can support Railroad Street Youth Project, visit www.rsyp.org or call the RSYP office at 413-528-2475. All proceeds from the event support RSYP’s youth development programs and activities.
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