What's cooking at WCCC? Culinary students serve meals at campus' Chef's Bistro
Fall aromas filled Westmoreland County Community College’s health and culinary center last week as students sauteed vegetables and piled fresh baked rolls with roast beef.
Students and community members filed into The Chef’s Bistro — a restaurant tucked into the college’s Hempfield campus. About 25 culinary and baking students are responsible for operations, taking turns working each role in restaurant management.
Some sizzled salmon and burgers on the grill or diced vegetables for salads. Others whisked out of the kitchen, hands balancing trays piled with the day’s signature dishes — a roast beef sandwich and chicken pot pie.
From taking orders to delivering checks to diners, students run the show, said Georgia Bossart, who is in her second year in the culinary program.
Students work in pairs to lead one week of food service, said Bossart, who plans to serve shepherd’s pie and a Mediterranean chicken sandwich during her week. Students select a recipe, calculate the cost of ingredients, price the menu items, draft a plan for the restaurant staff to follow and lead the food prep.
It’s such precision that drives Bossart’s love for cooking — developed while working four years at Firepit Wood Fired Grill in North Huntingdon.
“I found a passion for working on a line and taking control of things, especially because you have control of a kitchen even when everything else is out of control,” said Bossart, 19, of North Huntingdon. “That helps a lot with a lot of things in life.”
The Bistro offers a kitchen experience comparable to the local restaurants that second-year student Logan Mulheren has worked at in the past.
“It’s building that speed you need to get ready for service,” said Mulheren, 20, of Ligonier. “You don’t have all day to prep out. You have a deadline you have to meet, especially when you get hit with orders.”
Bistro teaches students ‘overall production’
Breakfast and lunch will be served at the campus restaurant every Tuesday through Nov. 25. Reservations are required for the Wednesday meals: the brunch buffet on Oct. 29, the Nov. 5 take-home dinner and the Nov. 12 dine-in three-course lunch. The Nov. 19 grand buffet for lunch is sold out.
The Bistro draws between 60 and 70 diners each week, culinary program Director Cindy Komarinski said.
“One of the things I hate to hear is when someone says, ‘Oh, you’re the best-kept secret in Westmoreland County,’ ” Komarinski said. “We don’t want to hear that. We want to tell more people, and we want people to know about us.”
The Bistro has gone by different names in the past, but the college has always offered some form of on-campus restaurant experience to its culinary students, Komarinski said.
“It’s not teaching one particular thing, like one cooking method,” she said. “It’s the overall production, all the pieces of that.”
At the Bistro, students have the opportunity to put their culinary lessons into practice — staying clean and organized throughout the cooking process and testing the flavor of each dish as they go.
Program graduates take their culinary skills in a variety of directions, Komarinski said. Some pursue business or dietetics degrees at four-year colleges while others gain experience at a local restaurant in preparation for pursuing a kitchen leadership role.
“We always say, with your education, we’ve enabled you to fast-track through to management,” she said.
Restaurants rebound from pandemic, ready for hire
The college’s culinary students are in luck, as the restaurant industry is ripe with job opportunities.
More than 800,000 hospitality workers were hired nationwide each month from June to September of this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
The influx may be tied to an uptick in turnover in the industry. An average of 715,000 hospitality employees nationwide quit their jobs between May and July — about 150,000 higher than the average for the year prior, the assocation said.
The covid pandemic is partially to blame, said Komarinski, who often receives calls from local restaurants and working alumni seeking employees.
“I think a lot of people left the industry (during the pandemic),” she said. “They went somewhere else. Obviously in this industry, you’re not working remotely.”
Though fine-dining establishments took a hit during the pandemic, there has been a rebound in recent years.
National restaurant revenue was $1.1 trillion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $1.5 trillion this year, according to the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association. This outpaces the $863 billion revenue reported by the Nation’s Restaurant News in 2019.
“It’s all coming back,” Komarinski said. “That pendulum swings back and forth.”
Quincey Reese is a TribLive reporter covering the Greensburg and Hempfield areas. She also does reporting for the Penn-Trafford Star. A Penn Township native, she joined the Trib in 2023 after working as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the company for two summers. She can be reached at qreese@triblive.com.
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