Illustrations by Matt Rota

Reality Bites

When a young chef tries to save teen lives through food, his students prove his toughest critics.

by Tim McGinnis

Everybody deserves a second chance.

I got one. I barely graduated from high school and narrowly avoided jail time as a youth. I felt vilified by teachers, and thought I had no hope of higher education. I retreated to the safety of restaurant work, and toiled away in the bowels of kitchens as my peers beer-bonged their way through college.

But it was there amid the long hours and stifling kitchen heat that I realized the value of hard work. I began to believe that with sweat and determination I could get somewhere. Cooking was something I was good at, and it would turn my life around. I went from dishwasher to graduate student, from two-bit teen criminal to supportive educator.

Cooking was good to me, and when it came time, I knew I needed to give back. I wanted to spark hope in students like me: the misunderstood, unrepresented and underserved.

But I never imagined how many societal roadblocks would stand in the way of progress, the roadblocks found in my students’ neighborhoods, schools and family life.

I was teaching culinary arts at a juvenile placement day treatment center in Center City when these words were hurled at me—maybe not so surprising in a city teeming with the disenfranchised. But this kid had a knife.

“Yo Jamal, that’s a terroristic threat!” warned Jose, a beacon of relative reason in my classroom. “That’ll get you a solid year.”

“Go have a cigarette or something, for Chrissakes,” I said.

The two bounded up the stairs of the basement kitchen and into the dreary wet afternoon.

Jamal, a grimacing 16-year-old with thick shoulders and cold yellow eyes, and Jose, a friendly 17-year-old Puerto Rican with braided hair and of short stature, had been sent to me as a last-ditch effort by the city and Catholic social services to straighten them out before it was too late. I was to teach them a trade, to instill a work ethic, to give them knives and tell them what to do.

The latter is exactly what I was doing when Jamal threatened me.

I’d just gotten a shipment of fresh zucchini and eggplant from New Jersey, and was teaching them a provincial French dish I hoped would inspire them to put down their bags of Cheetos and Funyuns and pick up an occasional vegetable. But Jamal saw the piles of foreign objects next to his cutting station only as work, and would just as well put that knife in me than slice anything called squash.

“What the fuck is a skawaash anyway?”

I moved to Philadelphia in September with the hope of teaching the trade. In a serendipitous coincidence, I saw an ad for a culinary instructor position at a juvenile center, and immediately applied for and got the job.

I’d already spent years in kitchens, as a dishwasher in my hometown of Cressona, an old coalmining outpost in north central Pennsylvania, then as a prep cook, oyster shucker, bartender and line cook in seaside towns in Delaware and Rhode Island. I’d crawled my way through the hierarchy of the kitchen world to become a sous chef before even going to culinary school.

Cooking had become a craft rather than simply a job, and I honed that craft by becoming a student of some of the greatest culinary minds in the world. I did, however, have a philosophical problem with my craft: It involved tons of waste. At the restaurants where I worked, I’d watch plate after plate of half-eaten food sent back to the kitchen by customers saving room for their dessert or cognac.

I saw dishwashers scraping together small amounts of money to send to their families in Guatemala eat from those same used plates. As I’d leave work via the back entrance, there’d be homeless people digging through the dumpster for the scraps the dishwashers didn’t get to. I was part of a demented and decadent food chain.

If they were here for assault or worse, I’d form a solid, unbreakable and totally negative bias about them. It would inhibit my ability to empathize, and sour my enthusiasm to teach. Though I never asked what led to their incarceration, it doesn’t mean I never found out.

Juan, a 17-year-old barrel-chested Puerto Rican from Hunting Park with a constant angry look in his eyes, came to the center halfway through the school year. During the intake interview, he said his father was a cook and that he wanted to work in a restaurant someday.

They immediately placed Juan in my culinary arts program. Another student of mine, Jose, knew Juan. They were from the same neighborhood.

Jose seemed apprehensive about Juan’s arrival. He told me Juan had a long history for such a short life. He’d been in and out of a litany of juvenile facilities.

He’d recently stabbed another teenager over a girl. Jose pointed out that box cutters are cheaper than guns, and will win a fight just as fast. You also won’t get a murder charge.

I was on edge ever since my life was threatened over squash. And to make matters worse, in college I’d been on the receiving end of a knife attack, and had the scar and the posttraumatic stress to prove it.

When Juan walked into my kitchen, there was something ominous about the way he carried himself. It made me flash back to the night I was stabbed.

After only a few blocks, two boys with their hoods up and a girl appeared, and started in our direction. I thought about crossing the street but dismissed my anxiety as paranoia.

As the trio came upon us, the tallest of them asked if I knew where he could score chronic. I said no, and was making my way past them when he suddenly wrapped his arms around my neck from behind and began choking me. The adrenaline rush sent a convulsion through my body.

The tall guy mumbled something about money, and I managed to push his arms up and slip my head through his grip. He punched me in the back, and I turned with my fists up, ready to swing. But then I heard the other guy yell, “Oh shit, he got stuck!” and the three fled down an alley.

I turned to my friend to tell him that my shoulder blade hurt something terrible. He stood wild-eyed and frozen with fear. I felt a steady stream of warmth course down my back. I put my hand inside the back of my coat, and when I pulled it out it was covered in blood. We ran frantically to my friend’s apartment and called for an ambulance.

My heart kept pounding, pushing more and more blood out of the gaping wound, soaking me from my shirt to my jeans at the back of the knees. The knife had entered inches away from my spine. The doctors said if the blade had been any longer it would’ve punctured my lung.

The police said there had been a lot of assaults in that area recently. Muggers had been casing restaurants and targeting servers because of their late hours and because they carried a lot of cash from tips.

But I wasn’t a server. I was a cook. I had $11 on me, and would’ve gladly forked it over. They never caught the guy who stabbed me, but now I don’t take more than 10 steps on the street without looking over my shoulder.

None of this changed the fact that Juan was now my student. I needed to somehow put the creeping feeling of panic I had about him aside in order to teach this kid how to cook.

Jose considered me a mentor, and I was glad to be the male role model missing in his life. His skills were advancing quickly, and I was pleased with his progress.

One day he coyly asked if I’d help him find a job. I told him that his growing culinary ability, coupled with the fact that he was bilingual, would make him very marketable in kitchens filled with Spanish speakers.

In truth, though, I was hesitant. My experience placing students in jobs had been less than positive. Not all restaurateurs were keen on hiring help with criminal backgrounds. When the students were hired, they usually did little more than wash dishes.

I didn’t want Jose to be disappointed. He explained that his mom was out of work again, and he needed to help her with household expenses. I made phone calls to my kitchen connections in the city, and found Jose a position at a Mexican restaurant in East Falls. Most of the kitchen staff spoke Spanish as their first language, and the manager was having trouble communicating with them. Jose could fill a much-needed role.

During the day, Jose continued to excel in my kitchen classroom. Afterward, he’d take a bus to East Falls to work at the restaurant. He was growing in pride and self-confidence.

But after a few weeks he grew exhausted as the double shifts began to take their toll. He became edgy. During a demonstration in class, I paused to ask a disruptive student to be quiet, and when the student replied with a “fuck you,” Jose punched him in the face.

I jumped between them, trying to pry them apart with my forearms while avoiding their fists. One fist caught me on the temple just as a teacher grabbed Jose and pinned him against the wall while I was holding the other student. The fight was considered a violation of Jose’s probation, and he was removed from the school and placed in a lockup facility.

I called Jose’s boss at the Mexican restaurant, and told him he’d have to resign. I was devastated.

He took to the knife well enough—after all, he did have some experience with a blade. And he was interested in all parts of the cooking process. I did my best to accommodate him.

But his emotional pendulum swung fast and with great force. There were moments when I’d see an irrational rage take hold inside him. Fearing a physical altercation could be on the horizon, I’d seek out Juan’s social worker at those times, and the three of us would try to deal with his anger.

It was during one of those meetings that Juan divulged that his mother was a drug addict and that he’d been court-ordered to live with his grandmother. Juan admitted to occasionally using drugs himself. “Nothing too hard,” he said, “usually just wet.”

“Wet” is a mixture of marijuana and PCP dipped in formaldehyde. It explained the mood swings.

The hours, the stress and, at times, the rolls of cash one can make often lead to a lifestyle of carousing the city imbibing whatever is offered until the sun comes up.

The routine becomes to sleep it off the next day and then sweat the rest out during that evening’s shift. When night falls, you feel good enough to do it all over again. It starts as a routine, then morphs into a dependency and finally into a kind of chemical cage from which it seems there’s no escape.

I worked with a cook named Brad for a brief period. Due to the transient nature of the business (he was coming and I was going), I didn’t get much of a chance to know him. He was a menacing figure, stocky like a bulldog with tattooed forearms and a short haircut. A skateboarder, he wore a Destructo Trucks T-shirt so often that Destructo became his nickname.

I took a job as a chef at another restaurant but had kept in touch with friends where Brad worked. A few months into the job Brad had been a no-show for three straight days. On the fourth the manager received a phone call and was told Brad had overdosed on heroin. Not even his closest friends knew he shot up.

I went into work feeling a bit distraught. My boss told me that in the ’70s he’d battled a coke problem for years. He beat it after he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror he was snorting from, and saw what he looked like. He flushed what was left of the cocaine down the toilet, and never touched the stuff again. He said some of his friends didn’t have the same will power, and eventually suffered the same fate as Destructo.

He went back to his paperwork, and I went off to finish my prep work. Later he asked if I had any vices. “Just the drink,” I answered.

“Well, be careful,” he said, looking concerned. “You already have two strikes—you’re Irish and you’re a cook.”

I thought about Destructo. It made me wonder if I was doing the right thing, training students with drug and alcohol dependency issues to enter a workforce filled with drug users, alcohol abusers and those who tolerated both.

Brad apparently didn’t have someone in his life to voice concern about his drug problem. I worried that Juan would also meet an early end without someone to refuse to tolerate his drug use. I became angry at the thought of his mother abandoning him for her habit, and was frustrated with his social worker for not spending enough counseling hours with him.

Someone in his life would have to step up and counsel him.

I realized that person had to be me.

The chef sounded uneasy as he told me that Miles had sliced his hand while segmenting grapefruit. “The cut is pretty nasty,” he reported. “Looks like it needs stitches. I’ll take him over to Graduate.”

His voice was shaking. “Don’t worry, he’s a tough kid,” I reassured him.

Turned out it wasn’t Miles he was worried about. “I’m not liable for this, am I?” he quickly asked.

His fear subsided when I told him Miles would be covered by our insurance policy.

In the past, though, Miles had gotten hurt at home and had been unable to pay. Once his father caught him with weed and tried to discipline him with a lecture on the evils of drug use. Miles asked his father how he could criticize him when he himself smoked crack. His dad responded by pummeling his face so badly his cheekbone was nearly fractured.

Miles’ family had no health insurance, and eventually the debt collectors began making threatening phone calls demanding payment. It wasn’t the first time health insurance had been an issue. Miles had braces for two years longer than he needed them because no one in his family could raise the money to have them removed. He once tried to pry them off with a screwdriver, but ended up doing more damage.

Miles’ circumstances reminded me of a line cook I’d worked with years earlier. After a shift at work and drinks at a local bar, we walked a female server to her car and said goodnight. When the server drove away, my whiskey-sodden co-worker giggled excitedly and chased her car down the street.

When she stopped for a red light at the end of the block, he jumped onto the back of her car using the bumper as a step stool. He stretched his gangly arms toward either side of the car as if he were trying to give the hatchback a hug.

The light changed, the server accelerated and the cook lost his grip and fell backward to the ground. His head bashed against the pavement and split wide open. We rushed him to the hospital for an MRI and stitches.

The night in the hospital, the painkillers, the stitches and the MRI cost my friend close to $8,000. He too was without health insurance, and spent the next two years chained to the grill trying to save enough cash to pay off the bills.

But it was Miles’ accident that got me thinking. How would he be able to cope when he graduated? He lacked book smarts, but was a savvy kid with intelligence and street smarts.

It seemed Miles would be strong in the kitchen and well-suited for restaurant life. Though he could provide for himself by pursuing a career as a cook, he’d likely work for a restaurant owner who would never dream of guaranteeing employees health insurance.

Restaurant workers desperately need it. Those employed in food preparation and serving-related occupations have the second highest rate of depression (10.3 percent), according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Moreover, Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University’s School of Public Health warns that restaurant workers’ risk of lung cancer is 50 percent higher than those employed in other fields.

But unlike teachers, cops and Web designers, most restaurant workers don’t have health insurance. In fact, 73 percent lack health insurance altogether, according to the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York. In addition, with a median wage for food service workers in Philadelphia hovering around $8.30 an hour, there’s little chance they can pay for it for themselves, let alone for a family.

My student Dru, a 15-year-old from West Philly with the friendly calm and criminal record of a recreational pot smoker, and I were garnishing a platter of hummus and pita with sliced roasted red peppers and chives when Yasir, also 15 but tall for his age, with freakishly large hands and feet and a kufi-covered head, felt the need to make his disapproval clear.

“Man, you Muslim, ain’t you?” asked Dru.

“Yeah, so?” said Yasir.

“Well, Muslims been eating this for a minute,” said Dru.

“Bullshit!” came the reply.

“Yasir, you don’t have to like it … just calm the hell down,” I said, agitated.

My students weren’t open to trying new foods, a challenge since the first day I started teaching culinary arts. When we made cheesesteaks or burgers, I had their attention. But anything that didn’t look like something you’d get from a food cart on Chestnut or Market drew an indifferent response.

I never stopped trying to broaden their food horizons. But no matter how much I tried, the perception remained that anything different had to be “rich-people food.”

It was rich-people food when we made flounder with a lemon sauce, and it was rich-people food when I tried to introduce the more universally liked chicken picatta. I tried an Ethiopian stew, but that too was rich-people food.

I was losing hope. A few like Dru would trust my guidance and keep my optimism afloat. Others, though, would cook the food as required but refuse to eat it. And some refused to work.

Why couldn’t I reach these kids? Why couldn’t they see a payoff in flipping burgers and maybe even a bigger payday in learning haute cuisine?

Haute cuisine?

Yasir had a point. I was trying to teach kids who came from nothing to see work from a middle-class perspective. Not only did my students not know the rulebook, they were playing an entirely different game. They were playing to survive. Their thoughts were in the moment.

“Guys, make yourself some cheesesteaks to take home with you. Clean up and relax until the end of the day.” I said.

“Can I make one for my girl?” Yasir asked.

I told him to make one for his mom and sister too.

The school day ended, and I went home to meet my girlfriend and have a meal out after a hard week. We decided on a Japanese restaurant near Rittenhouse Square.

The weather was warm, so we decided to eat outdoors. I was sipping on a Sapporo, awaiting the arrival of my eel and avocado roll, when a bus pulled up across the street. A man not much older than my students stumbled off and approached our table.

“Spare some change?” he said. “I’m hungry, and all I need is another quarter for a hot dog.”

We were reaching into our pockets just as the server showed up with our sushi. The man looked at it.

“I don’t know how y’all can eat that crap,” he said.

Just last week I spent hard-earned cash on Hawaiian butterfish over mashed parsnips at Mercato in the Gayborhood. I’m a regular at a nuisance bar turned gastropub in my Graduate Hospital neighborhood. I enjoy the finer things, but I also believe in balance.

I spend my weeks teaching impoverished students the culinary trade. This brings pride and hope to their lives. It gives them the opportunity for success. It helps them climb over those societal roadblocks—or at least recognize them.

Many folks spend outlandish amounts of money dining out without giving a second thought to that homeless and hungry man shaking the nickels in the bottom of his McDonald’s cup or the single mother trying to keep her teenage sons from being lured into the drug game.

I’d never say it’s shameful to experience the pleasure of great food, but if we have the privilege of eating—and in my case working with—fine food, we also have a responsibility to help those who may not have food at all.