Pacific Grove students put their cooking and management skills to the test in statewide competition.

Celia Jiménez here, thinking of the group of students from Pacific Grove High School who are participating in the 2025 CA ProStart cooking competition in Los Angeles today and tomorrow. 

Last week, I spent some time in the kitchen of PGHS’s culinary arts program. I watched students work with knives and pans to create a three-course fine dining experience.

Seeing the students on task chopping and mixing ingredients reminded me of Tijuana Innovadora, a cross-border event in Tijuana I attended when I was a journalism student in 2014. Back then, I photographed a cooking competition among renowned chefs in the San Diego-Tijuana region. Watching it was exciting, but I bet it was a stressful experience for the chefs involved. 

For months, the P.G. students have been working to perfect their menus and timing to make sure they cook and plate three dishes within 60 minutes. The decisions they face include choosing a type of cuisine, determining whether to boil or fry the catfish, or if they will make a flan or cake for dessert. 

In the end, the teams in the culinary competition chose to get their inspiration from Southern and Mexican food. Each team played on their strengths and preferences to make sure they would finish their plates on time and provide a tasty experience for the judges. 

I tried the food each team made and I told Imogen Erickson, PGHS’ culinary arts instructor, that the dishes her students prepared were some of the best meals I’ve tried around here. 

I also provided feedback to one of the teams. I won’t lie, I felt a little intimidated having four sets of eyes looking at me. I tried to be honest about what I liked and disliked from Herencia Mexicana, a trio of Mexican-inspired dishes. 

PGHS’ culinary program follows a ProStart curriculum, which is provided by the National Restaurant Association Foundation and the California Restaurant Foundation. 

“It really gives students a very comprehensive training and experience and what it would be like to work in the world of food service and hospitality,” Erickson says.

In this competition, teens put the skills they’ve learned during their Career Technical Education class to use, creating a three-course meal we could find at a high-end restaurant. One team in restaurant management is instead submitting a business plan. 

Students from PGHS have participated several times in this competition and last year, they placed third in the management competition. “If we succeeded our first year ever competing with a food truck, Hippie Hash (serving different types of hash dishes), then we could take that and expand on it this year and really fill in all the blanks that we had,” says Zac Fernandez, the team captain from the management team. 

Some of those “blanks,” Fernandez says, included miscalculating the return on investment and the lack of a detailed floor plan for the Commissary Kitchen, where they would prep meals. 

In this competition, students have to provide more than just their business plan. They have to answer questions about possible scenarios like not having enough personnel or if the truck isn’t working. 

The judges are “making sure that we have critical thinking skills, and making sure that we are fully prepared for anything and everything to happen,” Fernandez says. 

I was very impressed with the quality of the food and presentation the students delivered during their cook runs. My favorite part, from each set, were the desserts and the layers of flavors and textures they had in their non-traditional pastel de tres leches and banana pudding. 

The management team competed today, and tomorrow, Feb. 25, the culinary teams will participate. If any of them wins first place, they would go to the nationals in Baltimore representing California. You can read more about these young culinary stars in the forthcoming Feb. 27 issue of the Weekly.