FUELING YOUNG MINDS
spotlight on Michael Sconce Brimmer’s Director of Food Services talks good food, kitchen camaraderie, and the secret to kids trying something new.
I
t’s lunch time at Brimmer and the Corkin Dining Commons is the bustling heart of the school as the Brimmer kitchen prepares to serve what amounts to nearly 600 meals for a hungry crowd ranging from age 3 through septuagenarians, all with a variety of favorite foods, dietary observations, and taste preferences. What might seem like a daunting task for most is all in a day’s work for the Brimmer kitchen team, led by Director of Food Services Michael Sconce. With a calm, soft-spoken demeanor paired perfectly with a wealth of experience, Sconce has all the essential ingredients for a recipe for success. Sconce first took an interest in cooking as a young adult. “I enjoyed good food but I couldn’t afford to eat out at the time, so I learned to prepare it myself. My older brother learned to cook when he moved out of the house, and it seemed so sophisticated. I watched what he did, experimented by myself, and started buying cookbooks.” He was surprised to find that behind his budding interest was a real aptitude for cooking. “It came naturally to me—one of the only things really,” he remembers. But securing a job in a kitchen with no experience would prove to be no easy feat. In fact, it would take more than 10 years of applying, during which Michael worked as both a bike mechanic and a ski patroller while living in Washington State. Around this time, he also took the opportunity to return to school. “I chose to pursue a degree in nutrition because I like the idea of alternative medicine, though I’d consider nutrition to be more preventative than alternative.” His studies would, in part, help open the door to his first kitchen job. “The chef I worked for went to the Culinary Institute of America, and while his job was food, his passion was nutrition. Meanwhile I was studying nutrition, but my passion was cooking, so we interacted well-together. Since then, all I’ve done is cook.” Upon relocating to the East Coast, Sconce took a job as a Chef/Manager at Boston Medical Center where he oversaw a team
24
Spring 2019
Brimmer Magazine
