Comet Cafe kitchen given clean bill of health, meal planned for Friday

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Making the best of a difficult situation is an important life skill.

Some Charles City Family and Consumer Science (FCS) students received a valuable, real-life lesson in that area over the past week.

They learned how to make a food service area fully compliant with state health regulations.

Charles City School District students and teachers worked together to clean up and repurpose the Comet Cafe kitchen, and on Monday inspectors from the Iowa Department of Public Health re-certified the food preparation area, giving the kitchen a clean bill of health.

Comet Cafe students at CCHS plan, prepare, cook and serve meals, which are generally held as a luncheon at the high school. The public is invited to enjoy food completely prepared and presented by the students. The class simulates a real-world restaurant, and has been around for nearly 20 years.

Last week’s scheduled Comet Cafe lunch was canceled. The preparation area is housed in the 600 circle of the high school, an area that has been facing problems with its plumbing infrastructure, which forced the cancellation.

The district said that the classroom, built in 1963, was not built to handle a 2020 career readiness program such as ProStart, the parent class of Comet Cafe.

The high school FCS classroom’s kitchen was temporarily vacated and moved to the Charles City Middle School FCS classroom until the plumbing infrastructure could be repaired and the area was appropriately sanitized to meet required food and health codes.

Those codes have now been met, so the students are back at it. A rescheduled Comet Cafe lunch — open to the public — is planned for Friday this week, with two more dates upcoming on Feb. 13 and Feb. 27.

The theme for Friday’s meal will be “American Classics,” which is the same theme that was planned for the lunch that was canceled last week.

The meal will be a Sloppy Joe, home-cooked potato chips with sour cream, green beans with bacon, homemade macaroni and cheese and apple crisp with ice cream for dessert. Lunch A will be from 11:09-11:35 a.m. and Lunch B will be from 11:56 a.m. to 12:22 p.m. at the high school.