Culinary students rush around the kitchen, hurriedly prepping over 50 meals for Bowie’s staff and teachers. The hearty aroma of Polish food spreads through the air as students get ready to open their own restaurant for the day.
Pop-ups at Bowie have been a long standing tradition in the culinary program, these events occur periodically throughout the year, heavily in the second semester. For this to happen, seniors and the occasional junior get the opportunity to gain restaurant experience in the culinary kitchen.
“As a team, we create the menu and bring it to fruition,” Advanced Culinary and baking teacher Ricardo Howard said. “The students also work on the dining room, the theme, the decorations, and all of the recipes for the event.”
The students spend their junior year in the culinary program gaining experience and working to earn their spot as pop-up leader their senior year. They do this by helping other seniors prep the food for their own pop-ups, working under pressure, and completing tasks on a timeline. Towards the end of the year the students can start to plan their own pop-up after seeing how much work goes into it.
“A lot of seniors who come back after their first year are really excited, so their presentations can be very nice,” Howard said. “And they are showing me more than their culinary skills, they need to be able to calculate all of the ingredients and how much of each is needed, as well as thinking about ways to be cost effective with their recipes.”
Howard, or Chef Ric as the students call him, has helped maintain the program and develop the program into one where juniors get all the experience and guidance they need to be successful in leading their own pop-up. The final experience is meant to simulate a real life restaurant which is a common practice used in culinary schools.
“I feel much more prepared this year after I watched and worked under a number of seniors during their pop-ups last year, and saw their respective methods, their shortcomings, and what needed no improvement,” senior August Mosel said. “I give so much credit to Chef Ric and my mom, two of the most patient people in the world.”
On January 23, senior culinary student Maya Dudek got to open her Polish pop-up. She had to open on short notice combating weather delays and other conflicts, she only had two days to prep, compared to the customary four.
“Leading the restaurant with such little time was definitely a little stressful, but honestly I work really well under pressure, so we were able to finish prepping in time,” Dudek said. “I decided to do Polish food for my pop-up because of my Polish culture. Both of my parents were born in Poland, making me first gen, and I found it surprising that Polish food is not common here. I wanted my pop-up to be more unique, so I thought this was perfect.”
Another pop-up coming in the near future is being led by August Mosel, who plans to serve dinner cuisine like burgers.
“I wanted to create a pop-up that would give you the same dining experience you would receive if I were to invite you to dinner some night,” Mosel said. “I chose to make food that we make in my home often simply because it’s my favorite. I actually intend to go into finance, and in my application, I talked about the pop-up planning process, and how we price and plan for costing our menus.”
Culinary pop-up season is a time of year that students and teachers look forward to, they allow students to be creative and can give each student great experience for real life and college. The culinary program here at Bowie plans to continue these events for the benefit of its students.
“I love pop-ups and how personal each of them are,” Dudek said. “They are all based on the food and people we love or places we’ve been. Everyone works hard to execute their pop-up and we love seeing the food bring people together.”
