Isabelle Abraham
Staff Writer

 

Every year, the Great Lakes Culinary Institute (GLCI) puts on a community-wide event called Taste of Success, with this year's event being held on April 25 on the Great Lakes Campus. At this event, culinary students showcase their skills and creativity to community members in order to fundraise for scholarships, equipment, and the overall success of the institute. 

 

In the past, Taste of Success – or “Taste” for short – has been hosted through the use of to-go containers passed out to community members due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, however, Taste has returned to its regular structure of holding the event within the GLCI building. 

 

Although Taste of Success mainly revolves around food made in the World Cuisine class, every culinary student is involved. According to Chef Leslie Eckert, the culinary director of GLCI, the World Cuisine students choose a country, make three related hor d'oeuvres, decorate a booth, and feed 300 or more community members on the day of the event. 

 

The Plated Desserts class participates by making the desserts, the Restaurant class creates small tastings of items off of Lobdell’s menu, and the Maritime students run a raw sushi bar. Even the Professional Cookery students get involved by cutting vegetables and preparing stocks. Additionally, the Garde Manger class sets up a charcuterie table for the guests. Clearly, Chef Eckert was not exaggerating when she said, “It takes a village.”

 

Laurel Milne, a second year student in the Culinary Arts program, volunteered at last year’s Taste of Success event. “It was impactful seeing how these huge events are set up. I never thought about that until I was the one actually setting up the event. Like putting things together, putting up decorations, and how much stuff there is to do in the back. Taste of Success, like hundreds of people come to it. It’s a lot of people,” Milne said.

 

This year, as her final exam for world cuisine, Milne is working with Grace Lacruz and William Pappas. Weeks prior to Taste, students group together and begin brainstorming recipes and table design for their assigned country. This particular group of three chose the country of Lebanon. Milne explained, “One dish will be a lemon orange baklava and then we’re doing mini gyros. It’ll be a little cutout of pita bread, gyro sauce, a spicy cucumber, and then a tiny meatball. Then, we’re going to do a vegetarian version of that using falafel.”

 

Another student, Kayleigh Conroy, participated in last year’s Taste of Success as a part of her World Cuisine class. “My group did North Africa. We tried to go out of the box with it ... I know we touch base on a lot of basic countries around Europe and Asia, so we wanted to touch base on North Africa and do something underrepresented, especially here in Traverse City.” 

 

“We did three little hors d'oeuvres to be plated,” Conroy continued, “We did a table setup and served almost 400 people. It was very rewarding. We had a really long line for a solid two and a half hours. It felt really good, people were raving about our food.”

 

The event is not only an opportunity for students to gain first-hand experience with large events like Taste of Success, it also provides an opportunity to raise money for scholarships. After around three or four hours of eating and mingling, all the guests, students, and teachers are pulled into the Hagerty Center’s main ballroom for final fundraising and awards. Conroy was a recipient of one of these scholarships and she expressed, “Without that scholarship, I definitely wouldn’t be able to do school this year because I pay a lot of it out of pocket.”

 

Not only does Taste provide scholarships to help students pay their yearly tuition, the funds are used to maintain equipment used daily at GLCI. It also goes towards student knife kits, scholarship prizes for culinary competitions like ProStart, and additional scholarships for students wishing to go on study abroad trips.  

 

Chef Eckert shared that, “The event is done and maybe that community member talks about it for a few days … but their contributions live with us on a daily basis because we’re able to see the money being utilized by students. That’s an important message to get across: It might be a one-night event for the community, but what we reap in return as an institute is everyday.”