Tucked away on a quiet upper floor above the Manna soup kitchen offices, out of earshot from the occasionally chaotic parking lot, the four graduating students in the nonprofit’s culinary program are hard at work.

The atmosphere in the kitchen is a tranquil contrast to that of the frenzied archetypal culinary workspace. Students delicately plate the main course – braised Korean style short ribs with a mushroom risotto and gochujang glaze – as a small assembly of diners await in the garden pavilion below.

Last Friday, Manna graduated four students from its culinary program. For five weeks, under the guidance of Culinary Manager Megan Feuerbacher, the students worked their way through an intensive, fast-paced curriculum intended to prepare them for kitchen work at one of Durango’s many restaurants.

Lunch was their project, and a celebration of their accomplishments.

As the seven guests carefully consumed the elaborate entree, the culinary students shared their reflections on the course, punctuated at times with tears.

“Two years ago I was in this very town, homeless and heartbroken,” Kristina Fenimore started out.

Her mother had just died, and Fenimore was temporarily unhoused.

“I found Manna, and at first it was my place to eat every day … to me, it wasn’t just a soup kitchen, it was a family,” she told attendees. “Chef Megan, she saw the fear in my eyes but she also saw the hope in my heart and she challenged me, she pushed me and she believed in me even when I doubted myself.”

Manna’s culinary program has existed in some form for a decade, always with the intention of preparing its graduates to become members of the food service workforce.

But after the program shut down during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Feuerbacher came aboard and spent six months revamping the curriculum.

“Post-COVID, we were more focused on what do the restaurants actually need,” she said. “Pre-COVID, the culinary program was a lot of catering and learning to make chocolate and pasta and really fun things. But it wasn’t practical at all and the turnout wasn’t where we wanted it to be.”

In January 2022, she started teaching the new program. Friday’s graduating class was the 10th group to finish the new curriculum.

The new course focuses on practical skills, primarily safety and cleaning. Students spend four hours per day, four days per week in the kitchen, sometimes with guest chefs, learning escalating skills. At the end of the program, students have earned a Food Handlers Certificate. The culminating accomplishment is the three-course lunch menu.

“This is very practical and very fast-paced, since it’s only five weeks,” Feuerbacher said. “People have to want to learn and work.”

Thanks to a one-year, $10,000 Destination Advancement grant from Visit Durango, last week’s graduating class was the first to be paid for their time in the course. Each student received a stipend of $250 per week.

Upon graduation, around 70% of the students make their way into a professional kitchen in Durango or the surrounding region. Feuerbacher checks in with graduates periodically.

Her own arrival in Durango was precipitated by burnout in the restaurant industry, which is notorious for hosting high-pressure, sometimes toxic workplaces.

“It’s kind of my mission to make sure I’m putting people into a good place mentally and preparing them for what that can look like,” she said.

The course is not just for people who use the Manna food pantry or other services.

“This is for anyone in the community that … maybe they’re stuck in a rut and they want to change their life up a little bit, maybe they’re already working in restaurants or dishwashing or bussing and they want to get a step up more training on that,” Feuerbacher said. “It’s (for) anyone that needs and wants a job in the service industry here and the surrounding areas.”

And the students who graduated last week all have a culinary eye to the future.

Fenimore is applying for jobs at bakeries in Durango. Melissa Velasquez wants to open up a food truck, where she will serve “strictly burritos.” Angelia Liggens hopes to help her mother start a food truck that serves soul-food infused with Southwestern influence. And Natalie Bowers wants to start catering outdoor expeditions.

Around the lunch table, guests remarked on the accomplishment beheld in the meal before them.

First came a warm sambal elote salad, an idea that sprouted with Fenimore. The Texan said she has a particular affinity for the seasoned Mexican corn dish.

“I love elote, so I was trying to find a version of elote that would go with the short ribs,” she said.

The sambal, an Indonesian chili paste, gave the salad an Asian flair.

A hearty winter vegetable chowder followed. Liggens simmered on that idea when she saw the recipe in a cookbook, intrigued by cracked wheat, an ingredient she had never encountered.

And Bowers was “really attached to the short ribs.”

Building on Feuerbacher’s knowledge, the class spent hours simmering the Demi Glace sauce to produce a subtle, complex flavor profile for the ribs.

Upon the meal’s conclusion, the students gathered in the kitchen to indulge themselves.

Armed now with their certificates of completion, weeks of training and one very happy slate of diners tucked in their chef’s caps, the students feel prepared to enter the workforce.

“I just feel really grounded in where to go with this,” Bowers, who left Fort Lewis College last fall, said. “I don't feel stuck anymore.”

rschafir@durangoherald.com