It's Friday night—date night—and you're looking to up your game. Perhaps a trip down the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Philadelphia's famed Vernick Food & Drink is in order. Or, maybe you're toying with the idea of fighting traffic in Manhattan in the hopes of scoring a table at Le Bernardin. Nope.
Instead, set your Waze destination for Northampton Community College in Bethlehem Township. The school's student-run Hampton Winds restaurant is tucked away inside Alumni Hall, just across the street from the main campus hub. Never heard of it? You're not alone. “Everyone that comes in here for the first time says, ‘Wow, I never knew this place was here,'” says Francine Marz, director of the school's culinary program.
It should be noted: This is not your typical college campus chow hall. It's a fine dining restaurant serving up selections like Cassoulet with Duck Confit, Bouillabaisse and Pork Normandy. Think of it as four-star cuisine at two-star prices. “Where else can you get five courses with duck breast, or whatever else we've come up with, for like 35, 40 bucks?” Marz says.
Hampton Winds is the main course, so to speak, of NCC's culinary program. All of the school's chefs-in-training must complete a tour of duty here. In fact, the restaurant has been open for business for about as long as the school has had a culinary program, Marz says—about 25 years. While it's not unusual for a culinary school to have a restaurant that's run primarily by the student body, it is somewhat of an anomaly on a community college campus. And Hampton Winds aims to compete with the best of them with inventive and constantly changing menu options, as well as a competitive crew of up-and-coming cooks who take their craft very seriously.
Ruby Scharr is one of those students. On a Thursday evening in late August, as Hampton Winds welcomed its first guests of the fall semester, she's working in the front of the house. “It's our first night!” she gushes as she passes by a couple wrapping up their meal. “You did great,” they offer back, reassuringly. For Scharr, of Bath, it seems that cooking and baking may be in her blood; she says her great-grandmother was a caterer for the Kennedy family. She's been taking culinary classes at NCC since January. “I'd heard really great things about the program,” she says. “I had friends who went to Johnson & Wales [University], and they were learning the same things.”
While Scharr greets and serves hungry patrons, her classmate Angela Molle is settling into her sauté shift in the kitchen. An assignment to the back of the house means spending time at a number of stations, including pastries, soups, salads and the grill. As you might expect at a student-run restaurant, it's the instructors, like Marz, who ultimately are calling the shots as the orders start coming in. But Molle, of Roseto, says her input, along with the suggestions that come from her fellow chefs-in-training, is always encouraged. “They give us a lot of creative freedom,” she says. Students are given a say in decisions like what goes on the menu, and how the food is plated. They also have veto power. “We'll never send out anything that's not good,” Scharr says.
Scharr and Molle are among the 20 to 25 students working in the restaurant at any given time. Four to five students handle the front of the house, and the rest are in the back. By the time the semester is over, every student will have rotated through each and every position at least once, and maybe twice. If it sounds like a grind, Marz says, that's because it is. The hands-on learning at Hampton Winds comes at the tail end of three intense semesters of four that also includes classroom time, catering duties and special events. Scharr says she came to value the front-end requirements of the program as she was given more free rein in the kitchen. “I definitely thought it would be easier,” she explains. “Then I got thrown onto the line the first week, and I was like, ‘I'm so glad I had the foundation courses.'”
Working in the front of the house wasn't always part of the gig; it's one of the many changes Marz made after she took over the program about two years ago. “Most chefs don't like being in the front. The serving aspect forces them out of their box,” she says. It also makes for a more well-rounded learning experience. “It gives a student a 360-degree view of running a restaurant,” Marz says. And she should know—she's dabbled in nearly every area the industry has to offer, from fast food (her first job was at Burger King, starting at age 16) to catering to fine dining to management. Early on, Marz, a Johnson & Wales University alumna, was considering a career as a nurse until she was laid up after surgery for a torn ACL. “All I did was watch cooking shows, and I was like, ‘You know what, I want to be a chef,'” she recalls.
Prior to landing at NCC, Marz was the culinary arts director at Montgomery County Community College's Culinary Arts Institute. You won't find her doing a Gordon Ramsay impression in the kitchen—there's no throwing of utensils or profanity-heavy berating of students. But there is certainly an element of tough love behind the scenes at Hampton Winds. “I always tell them, if you think I'm mean, wait until you meet your first boss,” Marz says. “We try to simulate the industry as much as possible. It's always a learning environment. It's a great restaurant, but it's a school at the end of the day.”
And with every school comes a report card, but at Hampton Winds, it's not just the instructors who are doing the grading. Every diner is handed a comment card to fill out, detailing the highs and lows of their visit. “It's a different ball game to have to cook for the public and people you don't know,” says Marz.
Despite the hard work and demanding schedule, both Molle and Scharr seem to be having a ball. “I love it,” Scharr says. “I really look forward to coming to school every day.” Adds Molle: “It's very fast-paced. We learn a lot.” Molle also says she appreciates the camaraderie that comes with working and sweating alongside the same students in the classroom and in the kitchen for the better part of a year. “We've got a family relationship going on,” she says. “We bicker, but we work well together.”
They'll both wrap up their culinary courses in December. Post-NCC, Scharr envisions opening up her own business specializing in cookies, cakes and other sweet treats. Molle, like Scharr, has a soft spot for pastries. She says a place of her own might be in the cards for her, too, but she's also exploring enrolling in some business classes first, or perhaps tagging along with a cousin who's in the catering business and operates a food truck. Whatever the future holds for them and for their classmates, the odds of finding a job locally in their field seem to be in their favor. Marz says the job placement rate for NCC's culinary program is at nearly 100 percent. “There's tremendous demand in this area for cooks,” she says. “I can't push out cooks fast enough.”
Hampton Winds
Hours: Tues.–Fri.: Lunch: 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m., reservations are recommended.
Dinner: 5:15–6:45 p.m., reservations are required.
(Closed during student breaks)
Dress: Business casual
Price: Dinner is a three- or four-course meal, ranging from $30–$35, plus tax and gratuity.
Lunch is priced a la carte.
Menu offerings change periodically to reflect the seasons.
3835 Green Pond Rd., Bethlehem | 610.861.4549 | northampton.edu
