star student chefs

Move over, Top Chef: Connally High School is turning students into culinarystars

Chef Mike Erickson with Skills USA Cooking Competition 1st and 2nd Place WinnersCatie Curry and Miranda Doria.
Chef Shawn Cirkiel (left), Chef Michael Dei Maggi (middle) and Chef Steven Cak(right) at Guest Chef Dinner Series - Parkside Restaurant.
High School Cupcake Battle Demo on Fox News Morning Show with Ryan Johnson,Christina Corales and Ambria Taylor.
Jaleun Foster, Chef Mike Erickson, Ashley Jones and Diana Tran at the Skills USARegional Cooking Competition in Waco,Texas.

On the culinary TV show's first episode, Tom Perini of Perini Ranch Steakhouse, cookbook author, restauranteur, rancher and celebrity Texas Cowboy cook, demonstrated the Art of Chicken Fried Steak and chuck wagon cooking to a group of chefs. Episode five is a celebration of Chinatown, and eight is all about farm-to-table cooking. Padma Lakshmi? Gordon Ramsey?

No, this show is part of the John B. Connally High School culinary program, and it airs on cable TV's Channel Austin. The culinary arts series is produced, developed and cooked by the culinary arts students at John B. Connally High School, as well as edited and filmed by the CHS video tech department.

The series is designed as a project-based learning experience to give these Texas Pro Start students at John B. Connally High School a once-in-a-lifetime chance to interact with industry professionals like chefs, restauranteurs, cookbook authors and industry experts while producing a show about cooking and global cuisines. It's all part of the "Cooking With Connally — Where You Become the Chef" culinary arts program at the Pflugerville high school.

"I wish they would have had a program like this when I was attending Travis High School," says Chef Mike Erickson, the program's instructor. "I could have had the head start the young people are having in this industry at their age. They are getting a free $15,000 education in high school that is only going to prepare them that much more for the local restaurant industry or a culinary school."

Erickson, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, has worked for The Driskill Grill, Whole Foods and Shady Grove. He taught culinary arts at the Texas Culinary Academy and Austin Community College before joining the CHS program. "I am involved with the John B. Connally Culinary Arts program because I want to inspire these kids to look at the world of food as a career path, or at the very least a way to pay for their other goals and dream," Erickson says.

"I have worked in many area of the industry from casual dining, to hotels, catering, theme parks (Walt Disney World), teaching college culinary arts and even working on a train — but working with young people and being a part of there start in the culinary world is the most rewarding experience of all for me."

Monday night, Feb. 6, the program is hosting a major event: Taste of Asia with Chefs Christina Lee and Louis Ortiz, two Central Market Cooking School instructors. Taste of Asia is part of the Guest Chef Dinner Series, and the young students will learn how to make lemongrass-marinated shrimp skewers, a Korean dish called Japchae and sticky rice with lychee and mango. The dinner is also a fund-raiser for the program's CHS Teaching Garden.

"Hosting a Guest Chef gives these kids an opportunity to cook and experience different foods and cultures they may have never known existed," Erickson says. "And [it gives them an] understanding that there is a whole other level of food and cooking in Austin besides fast food and casual dining restaurants." Past Guest Chefs in the series include Shawn Cirkiel from Parkside, and Chris Ward from Lake Austin Spa Resort joins the Connally students next month.

And, Erickson adds, the Cooking with Connally student chefs are talented. Very. They just won a cooking competition in San Antonio, called the South Texas Culinary Challenge; in it, the competitors did not even know what they were cooking. The Connally students beat out 17 other high schools from around the state to win 1st place with their Aligot potato dish that they learned to prepare from the Chefs at Parkside the week before at the Guest Chef Dinner Series.

For the February 6 Guest Chef event, Chefs Lee and Ortiz will be guest cooking to raise money for the students' chef uniforms. "Chef Erickson is trying to teach his students life skills, whether they are continuing on to a culinary career or not," says Lee. "Often he is acting as a parent to give them guidance. He is also coaching the students in competitions and helping them to find jobs."

But the Cooking with Connally program is more than a culinary lesson—for many of the students, it is one of the only places for them to get fed. "Many are just wanting to take the class so that they can eat," Lee says. "I was told that many of the students who leave the school on Friday will not eat again until Monday." She shares that one evening, she was leaving Connally High School around 8 p.m. after a meeting.

"I noticed that there were many students still at the school. I asked one of the teachers escorting me out why the students were still there. She said it was because the high school had the heat on."

There are only 60 seats available during each session of the Cooking with Connally program — and already Chef Erickson has 147 applications for next year. With the state budget cuts to education, the program is even more strapped and grateful for sponsorship. The program aims to provide what is oftentimes the main, or only, meal for these students, as well as teaching them what real food looks like and to develop healthy eating habits from a young age.

"Chefs can have a tremendous impact on the health and well-being of children," Erickson said. "By creating healthy dishes that taste good, chefs have a unique ability to deliver these messages in a fun and appealing way to the larger audience, particularly children. The education these kids will gain is invaluable."

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Belles of the Ballroom

9 Austin bar and venue experts take over popular Old Austin space near UT

29th Street Ballroom/Facebook

Changes are coming at the 29th Street Ballroom, but the goal is to preserve what already makes it special.

The evolution continues at the 29th Street Ballroom, the music venue formerly attached to Spider House Café. It's no secret, Resound Presents CEO and co-founder Graham Williams says, that he and a large team of other industry pros are taking over the space; but now they're ready to talk about what comes next for the venue and adjoining bar.

Although Spider House Café closed in 2020, the Ballroom stayed open, and has continued serving University of Texas students and anyone else who wants to see a show outside of the ordinary: punk shows, burlesque revues, fundraisers, and more. It'll stay open through most of the renovations, scheduled through January of 2025, and is expected to hold a grand opening in March.

Now Resound — one of Austin's top live music organizers, which was itself born from the ashes of another Austin institution — is lending two of its co-founders to managing the space going forward: Williams and Ian Orth. They're joining seven other team members from venues around town, many of them overlapping: Amy Mullins, Brian Tweedy, Jason McNeely, John Yaklin, and Shannon LeBoeuf of Hotel Vegas, Chess Club, Kinda Tropical, Tweedy’s, and Yellow Jacket Social Club, in varying capacities; and Brian Buscemi and Mike Sanchez of the Little Darlin’.

Williams emphasizes that although things will be changing at the Ballroom, the goal isn't to change anything people already love.

"Over the next few months as we kind of ease into the spring, we're using this downtime to revitalize things, decorate, revamp some of the stuff in the venue and the bar, and just kind of get things moving in the right direction," Williams says, "taking what's already popular about the venue and just adding to it, really."

Bar updates
The biggest shift will be turning the bar from an accessory to live shows into its own entity that's open even when there's nothing else going on. Amy Mullins, best known as a co-owner of Yellow Jacket Social Club, is overseeing that transition. She's never operated a venue that is primarily focused on music, and has been enjoying learning more about how to do it; she even worked the door recently when a staff member called out sick.

Mullins echoes Williams in assuring that the change is more about logistics than tone. It'll still feel like Old Austin, but she does express a hope to run more than the "typical venue bar," handing out simple drinks as quickly as possible. She's working on a new menu that includes wine, beer, craft cocktails, and non-alcoholic options like tea, kombucha, or mocktails. Regardless of what's on the schedule on any given night, Mullins says the menu will stay the same.

"There's no drink too complicated for us to make, however busy we are," she says.

Food options
Another goal for the team will be making sure the space works when there's not someone onstage to crowd around. They'll expand the front and side patios and create a food truck food court that features the same trucks that are there now, plus one newcomer. All in all, that includes Yalla Burger & Wings, Gyro Center, Li’l Nonna’s Vegan Pizzeria, Guppy’s Indian Fried Chicken, Waylon J’s BBQ, and Ay Chihuahua Tacos.

The expanded patio will connect to Tweedy's Bar next door, which also has its own food trucks. The idea is to create a space to hang out after shows that feels fit for the purpose. It's possible to stick around after events now, but the layout does create a vague feeling of loitering.

Artist and fan-friendly tweaks
On the entertainment side, Williams says some of the renovations include putting in a new sound system, redoing the green room, updating the facade, and repainting signs. Since the winter is a slower time for live music, they'll be taking advantage of the extra time to work on things before packing the calendar with more events than before. Resound will handle most of the bookings in live music, comedy, and DJ sets, welcoming both national and local talent.

Whatever the details end up being, this team has proved to Austinites that they know how to run venues worth visiting. And since they're all friends and business partners on multiple levels, it sounds like having this many cooks in the kitchen just isn't an issue.

"Some of us have been roommates and known each other since we were young," says Williams. "It's a good mix of people who are all very like minded, so a lot is being brought to the table per decision. So yeah, it's it's really exciting. Sometimes that's not the case. .... But with this project, it's a lot of really great, creative people that are good at what they do [and] they trust each other."

bars live music concerts comedy