{"id":11604,"date":"2012-11-07T10:34:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T20:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=11604"},"modified":"2021-02-02T14:21:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:21:45","slug":"great-food-and-education-served-up-at-maui-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2012\/11\/07\/great-food-and-education-served-up-at-maui-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Great food and education served up at Maui College"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"676\" height=\"380\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bwsgnvYoCyk?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s top chefs are preparing top-notch meals today at the Leis Family Class Act Restaurant at the <a href=\"http:\/\/maui.hawaii.edu\/\">University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> Maui College<\/a>. The restaurant is staffed by second-semester students from the college&#8217;s Maui Culinary Academy, with a new group of students coming in each semester. The group is split into chefs and servers and they switch roles halfway through the semester. Waiting on tables is a surreal experience for many of the students who came to college to learn how to cook. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I can&#8217;t believe I&#8217;m serving fine dining, you know, and I&#8217;m actually getting really good at it in just a short amount of time,&rdquo; said culinary student <strong>Dalena\u00a0Duong<\/strong>. &ldquo;But I&#8217;m excited to get into the kitchen.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This week is our last week of service before we do our rotations, so Friday&#8217;s the last day, then I get to be doing what all these guys are doing,&rdquo; said fellow student <strong>RJ Domingo<\/strong>. &ldquo;I get out of the jacket and pants and get to put on a tie and my whites.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>By getting out of the classroom and cooking and serving in a real restaurant, the students learn every aspect of fine dining. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The only way you can really understand is to do real world experience, and we give it to them,&rdquo; said dining room instructor <strong>Juli Umetsu<\/strong>. &ldquo;This is a fine dining restaurant, our guests expect the best, we give it to them each and every week.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>The proof is the zuchinni saltimbocha and every item on the Italian menu, which changes weekly. Then there&#8217;s the quality service. Leis Family Class Act is the number one rated restaurant in all of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> according to national online reservation service OpenTable.com. The customers raved about this day&#8217;s lunch. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The hors d&#8217;oeuvre was the zucchini saltimbocca,&rdquo; said Kathy Pisony. &ldquo;It was awesome.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It was really great, the fish was cooked perfectly, it was just super, good stuff,&rdquo; said Timothy Pisony. <\/p>\n<p>The compliments and national recognition is nice, but it&#8217;s the real world experience the students appreciate. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We&#8217;re just introduced to a lot of different things, said Duong. &ldquo;You&#8217;re learning every day. There is so much to learn about the different foods that we make and, there&#8217;s just a lot to it.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;So grateful, for everything we&#8217;ve been given going to this school and learning from all of our great chefs,&rdquo; said Domingo. <\/p>\n<p>The Leis Family Class Act restaurant is open for lunch Wednesdays and Fridays. Menus and reservations are available online. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s top chefs are preparing top-notch meals today at <abbr>¶«¾«Ó°Òµ<\/abbr> Maui College&#8217;s Leis Family Class Act Restaurant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12],"tags":[184,344,60,56],"class_list":["post-11604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-news","category-video","tag-culinary","tag-maui-culinary-academy","tag-maui-college","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11604"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134844,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604\/revisions\/134844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}