Comet Cafe a culinary tradition at CCHS

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Charles City High School seniors Jacie Wink, Marissa Daniels and Mckenna Oleson were not crying at their Comet Cafe class on Monday, although a good many of their classmates were.

It wasn’t that their classmates were especially emotional, but rather because they were chopping up some unusually strong onions.

Wink, Daniels and Oleson, meanwhile, are in charge of dessert. No onion-chopping for them on Monday, and, typically, a churro cheesecake bar doesn’t burn your eyes.

Comet Cafe returns for lunch on Wednesday this week, from 11:10 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. at the high school. The public is welcome to attend and experience the menu of steak street tacos with all the toppings, Mexican street corn and tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole. Plenty of the aforementioned cheesecake churros will also be available. One can learn more about Comet Cafe and make reservations online at cometcafecc.com.

“This class is fun, because you get into stressful, real-life situations and learn to deal with them,” said Daniels. “We’re getting out there, and getting more people to come to it, and that’s really cool. We need the community support to make us better.”

Comet Cafe students plan, prepare, cook and serve meals, which are generally held as a luncheon at the high school. The class simulates a real-world restaurant, and has been around for nearly 20 years now, previously instructed by Dené Lundberg. She retired after the 2017-18 school year. Cady Mead, in her second year of instructing the class, said she received a lot of help from Lundberg last year.

“She helped with just figuring out the the teacher side of everything,” Mead said. “I knew everything I did as a student, and how that worked, but it was really hard getting into the money management, the ordering of the food — all the stuff the students help with, but I’m still in charge and ultimately responsible for it.”

Mead, a CCHS grad, participated in Comet Cafe when she was a senior.

“Last year it was kind of difficult making that step, just because a lot of the staff here was the same staff as when I was a student,” she said. “Making that transition was challenging.”

Mead said she has “a little more stability under my feet” now.

“I have a great group of students helping me out,” she added.

Sixteen students, all juniors and seniors, are in the class this year. Comet Cafe has included occasional sophomores in the past, but according to Mead, this school year there were 30 requests to be in Comet Cafe, and the class can only handle 15 or 16, so she made it just for juniors and seniors.

Daniels said, “I just loved it last year and decided to do it again. I love the leadership of it. In the kitchen, there is always a head chef — and we all hold different positions.”

Oleson said that every Comet Cafe has a different head chef who chooses the meal and the theme. This week’s chef is Jackson Biggerstaff. He had one week to figure out what he wanted to prepare, then he presented it to the rest of the class.

“We talked it over, then we collaborated as a group and decided who was on main dish, dessert, appetizer, etc.,” Oleson said.

Wink is in her first year of Comet Cafe.

“It’s always looked like it would be something fun to do, so when it was offered to me as a senior, I decided it was something new I should pursue and take on,” she said.

None of the three dessert-making seniors said they were considering careers in culinary arts, but they all said the class has given them valuable experience in food service — and just in general.

“It’s definitely a life skill that I see as very important,” Wink said.

Oleson added that hopefully in college she’ll be either waitressing or cooking, and it will be good to have that experience.

“It’s a good set of life skills to have, if they’re ever working at a restaurant. They already know how the kitchen works, they know the basics of working on a wait staff, they know how to handle and manage money, which is really good in all aspects of life,” Mead said. “Even personal skills, like simply learning how to talk with people — I think it’s great for them to be in the community and talk to people.”

Mead is hopeful the community will come to the high school Wednesday and talk to the students — and enjoy some good food.

“Come out and support us,” she said. “It is open to the public, and we have two half-hour lunch seatings”