E IG H T ONE SE V E N
Laying the Foundation
The Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival hopes to change the local restaurant scene through largesse. BY ERIC GRIFFEY
The lab on the first floor of Trimble Tech High School on the Near Southside doesn’t look like your typical venue for a science class. The front of the room
houses the traditional neat rows of student desks, an overhead projector, and cluttered instructional classroom posters and signs taped to the concrete walls, including, “Speak in complete sentences,” but it’s the back of the expansive bunker-esque space that stands out. Amid an arrangement of stainless-steel tables, ovens, sinks, vent hoods, kitchen cabinets, and an industrial mixer, 10 jovial students donned in white jackets recently stood around their upbeat instructor, Heather Kurima, who was also wearing her chef coat. The chef-turned-high-school-teacher was talking the kids through the finer points of tossing dough as part of her lecture on the science of pizza. “You can use a rolling pin and cheat,” she taunted, “or you can learn to stretch the dough by hand. I just don’t want to see a bunch of pizza dough on the ceiling.” Similar scenes repeat around Fort Worth schools every day, as culinary arts classes are becoming more widespread throughout the region. As the various cooking programs expand, local chefs and professionals in the restaurants business have stepped in and taken on roles as mentors and benefactors –– none
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Bruton: “The Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival is an inspiration.” Photo by Jeff Prince
March 2019
