Students get a taste of fine dining instruction

TR McCrystal of Jen's Garden fame has stepped into Sisters High School class offerings, teaching two periods a day of culinary arts. Not unlike the new offerings of health/fire science/EMT, flight science, STEM (science, technology and math) and entrepreneurship, this class offering will bridge the gap between academic work and "CTE" (career and technology education) offerings.

"What I am trying to develop is a life skill, so that they can go out and work in the industry," said McCrystal.

Career ambitions are not a prerequisite, however.

"A lot of these kids come in, they do this one time. It fits in their schedule. They want to cook. They want to eat a little bit. It is not like their ambition is to be in the culinary arts."

TR and his wife Jen started the very popular fine dining restaurant, Jen's Garden, in Sisters eight years ago. Since that time, while continuing to run and grow the Sisters restaurant, the McCrystals have also been involved with Thyme restaurant at FivePine, and more recently, TR returned to Jen's Garden after a stint as the executive chef for Deschutes Brewery.

McCrystal offers more than 30 years of restaurant experience to help inform his classroom curriculum at Sisters High School. Nine weeks into his first trimester he is learning to adapt to the ways of today's teen age students, and they are learning to adapt to his high expectations.

The first test of this mutual learning experience will come Friday, November 15. To raise money for their program, the third and fourth period classes will be competing for the public's "votes."

From 5 to 7 p.m., just before the fall musical, the students will be offering a Costco-style sampling food fair in the commons. Those who come early for the musical will be able to sample any of the four recipes that each class will be offering (Mexican, Asian, Italian, American) and vote for their favorite recipe by purchasing a frozen version of that recipe to take home to treat their family.

McCrystal's students are learning a lot more than just how to clip and cook a recipe. They are learning how to plan and cost out meals, how to queue up ingredients, and how to design their creations so that leftovers can be repurposed for other uses to minimize waste.

Besides learning to plan and cost their creations, the students are getting real world challenges in math by having to convert and scale recipe measurements, and to calculate profit and loss on their offerings based on real life scenarios.

Besides learning a life skill, McCrystal is trying to instill in his students a joy of cooking that they can draw upon their entire life.

"If you are excited about cooking, cook!," says McCrystal to his students. "Go home and cook something. I will give you extra credit if you bring in pictures of something you cooked and a review from your parents."

McCrystal explained, "I was a high school student that really didn't have much direction. I was going to college at Cal Poly Pomona to get a four-year degree in hotel and restaurant management. I started working in restaurants to make money for school, and when I got into the kitchen, I liked it, and I discovered I had a natural talent for it.

"I like to say that I became a chef through attrition and ascension," said McCrystal. "I would be cooking in a restaurant kitchen and the chef would leave, and they would hand me the apron and say 'You are the chef now.'"

Sisters had been "a magnet" for the McCrystals for some time before their move here. Jen grew up in Glide, Oregon. TR met her in Glide when he was working at the Steamboat Inn. Jen had been to culinary school and folks thought they should meet.

"Quite honestly Jen and I moved here to raise kids and have them go to great schools," said McCrystal. "We have two girls, one at Sisters Elementary and one at Sisters Middle School. Everything that we support has to directly benefit Sisters as a community."