The Truck Starts Here

Emeril Lagasse Foundation's Boudin, Bourbon and Beer helps fund NOCCA's culinary arts program, which will soon include a food truck.

[Updated] In the kitchen classroom at New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), two students are busy. They’re experimenting with waffles, trying out a new batter recipe. NOCCA has acquired a food truck, and within a month the culinary arts program hopes to have it in operation. Right now, the truck is being retrofitted with the necessary equipment, and the students are test driving recipes and menus. One of the two is Grace Treffinger, a former student who has returned to work on the food truck project. She’s also sourcing produce within 200 miles of New Orleans to emphasize regionality, and she’s trying to be healthy without sacrificing taste. She nods slightly sheepishly when the sizzle of something being dropped in the fryer undercuts ironically punctuates the thought.

“We want to explain to kids that you can eat well and eat good food, and it can be healthy for you,” says Chef Dana D’Anzi Tuohy, the culinary arts chair. 

NOCCA’s culinary arts program has been a beneficiary of the Emeril Lagasse Foundation, which will host Boudin, Bourbon and Beer tonight at The Foundry. Lagasse and chefs Mario Batali and Donald Link are co-chairs for the event, which will bring together more than 40 chefs from across the country to prepare boudin, artisan sausage and related dishes. The musical lineup for the event includes Grace Potter, Lost Bayou Ramblers, Holy Ghost Tent Revival, and the Packway Handle Band. Since Spring 2007, the foundation has donated almost $750,000 to NOCCA for the culinary arts program including money to help build the Emeril Lagasse Foundation Culinary Arts Studio at NOCCA.

The kitchen at NOCCA has been up and running for three years. The food truck has been part of the concept since early on, but it’s only finally approaching fruition. It is student-supported not student run, Tuohy says, because there’s not enough time to cover the curriculum and operate a truck. Instead, alumni are running it, and two graduates and one current student will also work on it independent of class time. Treffinger leads the team, but in September she will leave to go to Berkeley for university to focus on food in communities, so she’s interested in sustainability. “It’s really cool for me to have this opportunity and do the hands-on work,” she says. “We were taught the business aspect of it, which is how I know how to do all that stuff.”

The program was designed to expose students to the broad variety of concerns someone in the food industry will face. 

“That’s the great thing about NOCCA because all the artist disciplines do that,” says Kristin Shannon, executive director of the Emeril Lagasse Foundation. “They all treat it as if you moved into the industry. What are your options? There’s the technical aspect, the business aspect, and the creative approach all combined in the curriculum.” That curriculum also touches a number of other food-related professional activities so that students can find the area that speaks to them, even if it’s not food preparation. 

“Emeril says that’s the most best thing you can learn in ninth grade,” Shannon recalls. “So you don’t apply to all these culinary schools and get in in freshman year and realize Maybe culinary wasn’t for me after all while you’re thousands of dollars in debt.”

Treffinger’s an example. She started when she was 13 and certain she wanted to be a chef. By the time she was finished, she had worked in a restaurant in Chicago and realized that she was more interested in food policy and politics than cooking. Now she’s dealing with the challenges of opening a food truck at the nuts and bolts level. How many menu items can they handle? What should they be? She’s planning some sort of drink as an alternative to sodas, and some sort of sweet. How do you offer such things as stay health-conscious and profitable? What are the implications of tying your food to your garden and regionally grown and raised ingredients?

One byproduct of the curriculum is that it not only helps students think about how to make healthy food good, but how to make good food healthy. Tuohy has seen that the palates of students change the more they know. “We’ve got to a point with our upper level students where they want the healthier versions,” she says. “They don’t want cream and butter-loaded mashed potatoes. They want half-cauliflower potato mashed with stock because they understand flavor now. They understand texture, and all the things we can substitute without losing those two vital things, flavor and texture.”

Part of the philosophy of the program is mentoring, not only with Tuohy giving the students the benefit of her real kitchen experience, but with the students exposed to other chefs. This weekend, they’ll work with chefs participating in Emeril Lagasse Foundation’s Boudin, Bourbon and Beer, and in its Carnivale du Vin, the black-tie gala and wine auction on Sunday night. 

“Thomas Keller was there one year and you’re working right beside him,” Treffinger says, impressed. “You have to be able to hold your own. It’s really fast-paced.” 

Those experiences are ultimately friendly as students are working with chefs who understand the circumstances, but working in a kitchen becomes more real when there are guests who paid money for good food, not food that’s good considering teenagers helped prepare it. The chefs, similarly, have their names on the line and expect the preparation and presentation up to their standards. “It’s teaching professionalism,” Shannon says - part of being a mentor and part of what the visiting chefs enjoy about the weekend’s events.

“They want to be here for Emeril, and they have relationships with Emeril,” she says. “But they also see what the foundation’s able to do with the funding that we raise, and they meet individual like Grace who are products of that success. They can feel much closer to the reason why they’re here in the first place.”

Emeril Lagasse Foundation’s Boudin, Bourbon and Beer takes place tonight at The Foundry, and tickets are still on sale. Carnivale du Vin is sold out.

Updated November 8, 12:57 p.m.

Emeril Lagasse Foundation's Boudin, Bourbon and Beer is Friday, not Saturday night, and Grace Potter will perform without The Nocturnals. The text has been changed to reflect these corrections.