A Cut Above

By Angie Johnson-Schmit

Chef Robert Barr, Program Director at the Sedona Culinary Institute at Yavapai College, has a sincere passion for sharing his culinary skills with students. From kitchen prep to plating, he loves teaching people the entire process to help prepare them for a career in the food and beverage industry.

The Sedona Culinary Institute offers a certificate degree program in Culinary Arts Fundamentals and is launching a Baking and Pastry Certificate program this fall.

Students enrolled in the culinary arts program learn all the core skills needed to work in the restaurant business. The coursework is a hybrid of online lectures, chapter readings and homework, combined with in-person labs. This gives students the opportunity to focus on putting that online education into action with hands-on learning.

In addition to a world class chef leading the program, the facilities are state-of-the-art. Housed at the former Zaki Gordon Film Institute location, Yavapai College renovated the buildings, spending over two million dollars on the Culinary Institute’s professional kitchens. This allows the students to learn in as close to a professional environment as possible.

The goal of the program is to prepare students for the workplace. To that end, they are working to provide real world experience for their culinary students. “We’re taking over the cafés in both campuses here on this side of the mountain, the Verde Valley campus and the Sedona Center,” said Barr. They are also starting a new culinary practicum designed to get the students working in restaurant kitchens. “We’ll be able to train them even better to work in the industry because there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t get a call or an email or a text with somebody looking for someone in the industry,” said Barr.

The Sedona Culinary Institute attracts a variety of students. “We have adults that are changing careers,” said Barr. “We have professionals that want to hone their skills. We have individuals that want to get into the career that never had touched a knife.” In addition to the adult students, Yavapai College has partnered with Valley Academy for Career and Technology Education, a Cottonwood, Arizona high school focused on helping students prepare to enter a trade.

For Barr, it is very much a feeling of having come full circle, as he credits a high school trade program with giving him the skills and confidence to pursue his career in the hospitality industry. He gets satisfaction from being able to help those students and clearly remembers his own experiences as a high school culinary arts student. “I know right where they are and what they’re doing and how they feel, and what they’re excited about, what they’re scared about,” he said.

Especially for the high school students, Barr feels the program offers important life skills beyond the kitchen. “We teach them or at least inform them how important it is to be on time,” said Barr. He helps students understand that showing up late or not showing up at all impacts everyone they work with as well as the success of the business. And, of course, knowing your way around a kitchen is an important life skill for everyone.

Barr gets excited when his students discover they have an unexpected talent. He recalled one high school student who did not do well the first semester. “I was honestly not going to have him come back for the next semester,” said Barr. He was glad he changed his mind when they started the second semester and got into baking.

Part of the second semester’s mid-term exam was to crumb-coat a cake, cover it, and use four different frosting piping styles. “Once he put his hand on a bag of buttercream and piped out a rose, it was remarkable,” said Barr. "And he piped another one. Beautiful.” Barr keeps that student’s cake in the freezer and pulls it out to show other students in the program. “You know what he’s doing now?” asked Barr. “Frosting cakes and making big money.”

Throughout his career, Barr has always loved to teach. From working as an instructor for corporations, to teaching at art institutes, he enjoys sharing his skills and knowledge with students. “It’s 40 years, but half of my career has been teaching,” he said.

His interest in cooking started at home. His mother made a lot of casseroles to feed the family of nine, but it was her desserts that inspired Barr. “She made these brownies that were out of this world and that really kind of triggered it for me,” he said. “I got really good at making chocolate chip cookies as a kid, without a recipe.”

In eighth grade, those chocolate chip cookies changed the course of his life. During a meeting with his school counselor, Barr mentioned his cookie making abilities. It just so happened that a brand-new trade school program in nearby Boys Town, Nebraska had started. Only six students were chosen from his school and Barr was one of them. Every day during high school, Barr traveled to the trade school to learn culinary arts. “I was extremely fortunate to be able to learn the things I learned and went on from there,” he said.

After high school, Barr got a job at a steakhouse in Omaha. He quickly moved on to take his first sous chef position. When he got the call that he was hired, Barr “honestly had to look up what sous chef meant.” He knew it was a huge step up and was thrilled to be working as essentially the second-in-command of a large kitchen.

Barr was immediately faced with a challenge. He had fibbed when he applied for the sous chef position and said he could do ice carving. Instead of throwing his hands up in defeat, he called on his art skills and made it happen. “I have the pictures of it,” said Barr. “I show my students and…they weren’t terrible.” In a bit of serendipity, that ice carving led to meeting the woman he would marry. “I was kind of chipping away and my wife was a restaurant manager…and that’s how we met.”

Barr often met his career goals ahead of his self-imposed schedule. “I always said I’d be a certified (with the American Culinary Federation) chef when I was 35,” said Barr. “Well, that happened in my mid-twenties.” After putting in some time as a sous chef, Barr decided he needed more education and went to culinary school in France. He went on to become the corporate chef for the Union Pacific Railroad, open his own restaurant, and cook for celebrities and professional sports teams like the San Antonio Spurs.

He is still amazed by “the things we can accomplish if we say yes,” and tries to impress the power of “yes” on his students. Ten years after that first ice carving, he found himself assisting the American Culinary Federation international ice carving team that won the world championship. He believes it is important for his students to understand that “there’s so many different facets and different places that you can go in the hospitality industry.” Chef Barr is a living testament to that fact.

Robert Barr’s Chicken Olivia

A dish created by Chef Barr for Olivia Newton-John

Serves: 2

Method: Sauté

Minutes: approx. 30

Difficulty: 3/10

Ingredients

(2) 6 oz. chicken breasts, 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, 4 garlic cloves, 4 oz. green onion, chopped small 4 oz. hearts of palm, 1” cubes 4 oz. artichoke hearts, quartered, 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped large

Instructions

• Sauté chicken breast in olive oil to just the point of “doneness” 165 degrees. Remove from pan and keep warm.

• In the same sauté pan, add all other ingredients and sauté for 5-8 minutes until vegetables are warmed, but with good texture and color. Note: While chicken is resting, there will be juices left in the plate. Add those juices to the vegetables.

• Plate the cooked chicken breast with your choice of rice pilaf or angel hair pasta.

• Divide the cooked vegetables. Add vegetables on top of the chicken breast and serve.