Chef Shehu Fitzgerald has a shaved brown head, an open face, and a densely tattooed right arm. With his graceful homeboy manner, She’ (pronounced as in "Che" Guevara) could be the brother or cousin of almost any student in the FSTA. Even better, he’s a 35 year old man who has made it in the culinary world. The Senior Sous Chef at the New York Marriott Marquis, She' is also the head of his own food business and a recently inducted member of Les Amis d'Escoffier. Raised on Staten Island, he did his culinary training at a New York City branch of Johnson and Wales University. She’ has traveled the world, cooking in kitchens from England and France to New Zealand. 

He visits the FSTA on the morning of March 16, 2009, accompanied by his lively wife, Veronique, a wine agent and a producer of short videos; many of Veronique's productions star her husband, the "Culinary Genius." 

Cooking demonstrations by the chef are the order of the day. He announces that he'll be making cauliflower soup, chicken breasts served with a vanilla bean carrot purée, and his signature Chicken in Salt Dough. In his recipe for Chicken in Salt Dough, on a bed of frisée and arugula and topped off with a lemon aioli, She' explains, "This is an impressive way to present a roasted chicken! The dough case helps the chicken cook evenly and imparts some of its aromatic flavors into the skin and flesh." Students wanting an illustration of "aromatic" can consult the chef's list of spices: e.g., juniper berries, nutmeg, cinnamon, lavender and bay leaves. 

Prep work begins in the kitchen with student assistants chopping heads of cauliflower and broccoli and bunches of carrots. As they work, She’  prepares and rolls out the salt dough; he rubs two trussed chicken with olive oil, salt, pepper and coriander, and then encases each chicken in a "sandwich" of dough, sealing it on all sides.

Once the prepping is complete, the chef and students move upstairs to the FoodBank's Community Room. In the Community Room’s fancy demonstration kitchen, Chef She’ places the two wrapped chickens in a pre-heated oven. Then he settles his pots, chopped veggies, salad ingredients and uncooked chickens on the green granite serving "island." A four burner electric stove - - most chefs wish were gas - - awaits him. “You can't get the same high heat from electric as you can from gas,” the chef says, as he begins deboning a pair of plump chickens. ”But it's okay,” he adds. ”I make do. That's what we gotta do, improvise, make it work out.” 

"Hear that pop?" Chef She’ asks, as he pulls a chicken leg away from the thigh. Thomas Armstrong nods as he aims his phone/video at the chef - - trying to capture the technical fine points as well as the whole experience. "It's his passion that I'll remember," Thomas says. "And the way he's relaxed and enjoying himself." Thomas, two years older than Chef She’ and the father of four, wants to establish his own catering business when he graduates. For many years, cooking in restaurants, Thomas studied TV food shows and imagined himself in the shoes of celebrity chefs. He fantasizes owning his own five star restaurant. Ever since he was a kid, observing his mother's every move in the kitchen, Thomas loved cooking. She’ mentions that his mother was a baker who did catering from home. He knew from the time he was five, he says, that he wanted to be a chef. 

Thomas, twenty-five other classmates, and a few FoodBank employees crowd around the cooking island. The shorter people move toward the front. Everyone watches as the chef slices cooked chicken breasts at an angle (the pieces look more interesting and bigger that way, She’ explains) and then plates the bright orange carrot puree, white wax beans, green broccoli florets, pale chicken slices and halves of tiny, fiery red grape tomatoes. It’s food for the eyes as well as the palate and the belly. The chef’s movements are smooth and efficient. Like any good professional, he makes hard work look easy. He invites imitation. She’, for many of these students, is the cool and successful person they think they know and believe they can become.

But not everyone identifies with the young black chef. Not everyone dares to dream. While the demonstration is in progress, a half dozen students hunker down at a table - - waiting for their samples of cauliflower soup and the two chicken dishes. Perhaps, they’ve grasped what's invisible in the Chef's deft performance: the years of rigorous apprenticeship, the self-discipline, the single-mindedness, the willingness to grind out the work and lose oneself in it. Perhaps they’ve glimpsed the ocean that separates a novice cooking student from a "Culinary Genius."

Doris Friedensohn

18 March 2009

(Doris Friedensohn is Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies at New Jersey City University. She writes about eating, education, feminism, and social change. A chapter in her food memoir, Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad, (University Press of Kentucky, 2006) deals with the Food Service Training Academy.