The Cooking Up Change event sure sounds like a night of fine dining — a panoramic view of the city skyline, an opportunity to meet the chef.
So, what’s on the menu?
School lunches.
The healthy cooking competition, sponsored by the Chicago-based Healthy Schools Campaign, challenges teams of high school culinary students to create flavorful lunches while constrained by the same limited budget and dietary standards that dictate typical school meals.
The annual event returns Thursday, with students from 16 CPS high schools facing off to cook the best meal.
“We have 750 people come to eat school food,” said Healthy Schools Campaign president Roselle Davis, laughing.
That’s the size of their usual crowd, anyway, but there’s room for even more. The event is open to the public and starts at 6 p.m. at the Skyline Loft in the Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Tickets are $100 at the door.
Nyah Griffin, now head chef at a children’s charity, is a judge at this year’s competition; she helped lead her teammates to victory in the inaugural Cooking Up Change competition in 2007.
Griffin remembered that she and her teammates from Chicago Vocational Career Academy cooked up a “soulful” menu that first year — red beans and rice, candied carrots and cabbage — a meal that remains the only vegetarian plate to ever win the Chicago contest.
Her team’s winning meal — like others since — was served at all Chicago Public Schools campuses one day the following semester.
Griffin said she remembers her peers enjoying the recipe; it included “flavors that they [the students] were used to having. The meal was something flavorful, like something back home.”
Some meals have even been fully integrated into the district menu by students’ popular demand — for example, a curried chicken and Caribbean garden salad that won the contest two years ago.
In addition to having their meal served across the district, the local team that comes out on top also wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete against contest winners from other regions.
A Chicago school has not won the national contest yet, but Chicago students placed third in the previous two national competitions.
As a judge, mentor and former competitor, Griffin gave some advice to the students in this Thursday’s contest:
“Cook from the heart. Don’t worry about the competition. If it’s a heartfelt dish, at the end of the day, they’ve won.”