Young cooks win state

Newport Harbor High School’s culinary team took first place over the weekend in the California ProStart Competition, a two-day cooking event in Sacramento.

The school, which competed against 15 other California high schools, will advance to the finals in Overland, Kan., April 30 through May 2.

This is the second year in a row that the high school has placed first in the competition, which is hosted by the California Restaurant Assn. Educational Foundation.

“This year we felt confident, but honestly I didn’t think we would win because there were a lot of strong teams,” said Edgardo Meza, a senior at Newport Harbor High. “It feels awesome to accomplish something like this. We earn a lot of respect from our peers when we’re able to come back to school as winners.”

The culinary team included Meza, Gabriela Gomez, Jessenia Hernandez, Eduardo Medina and Kasey Hyde. The management team included Gabriela Gomez, Jessenia Hernandez and Irene Martinez.

Janet Duke, the squad’s teacher, said she always had confidence that her class would do well in the competition.

And it was no easy task. Students had to be creative with some of the meals, considering they weren’t allowed to use electricity or running water during the cook-off.

They had to cook the chicken on propane grills, in a setting that could have been mistaken for some camping trip, although the outcome was exquisite, Duke said.

“I’m so proud of my team,” Duke said. “They worked so hard for this, and the hard work has paid off.”

Newport Harbor High is the only school in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District that offers such classes – but there are 100 similar culinary classes statewide.