By Myles Ma
Residents don’t have to watch TV to see a trained chef show them how to cook. They can just go to Chambers Walk Café.
Owner Mario Mangone leads cooking demonstrations at the restaurant in the fall and spring, in which he shows about 10 students how he prepares some of the dishes on the Chambers Walk menu.
Mangone, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., demonstrates an appetizer, an entree and a dessert at each two-hour class. The instruction is conversational, stemming from Mangone’s explanations of how he’s making each dish and the students’ questions on his methods, presentation or ingredients.
Mangone teaches the class from behind the restaurant’s display bar. He provides the kitchen tools, the ingredients and the know-how, while his students bring the wine, the questions and the conversation.
While the classes aren’t hands-on, the students all have the opportunity to take the recipe home and try it themselves, after Mangone shows them how it’s done – and how it should taste.
“I do all the actual cooking and presenting and then they get to enjoy the fruits of my labor,” he said.
The class draws a wide range of culinary talent.
“There are all levels of home chefs in the audience: experienced, inexperienced, middle of the road,” Mangone said. “I try to gauge the class level with the questions that are being asked.”
As a result, Mangone tries to keep his instruction and his recipes as simple as he can.
This month will mark the fourth year Mangone has offered the cooking classes. They generally run every Monday from September through November and from January to April.
Though classes seem to run concurrently with typical college semesters, there’s no curriculum. Each class is a standalone lesson; no need to take notes for or even attend the next class.
The cooking demonstrations were first conceived of as a way to fill the restaurant’s empty Monday slot – Chambers Walk doesn’t serve dinner Monday nights.
Mangone emphasizes connections in his classes: the connection between food and body, the connection between the meals he creates and the farmers who cultivated them, and the connection between the cook and what he or she is cooking.
He encourages amateur chefs to experiment when they cook and most of all, to relax.
One thing he says at the start of many classes is, “Everybody relax and let’s feel good about where we are.”
More tangibly, students learn basic knife skills, organization and cleanliness in the kitchen, how long, and how hot to cook food, as well as how to coordinate different ingredients.
Many of the students opt to do the optional homework he assigns, Mangone said.
“The homework is to go home and try it at your leisure, with no grading system,” Mangone said.
Anne Garwick, a Lawrence resident who estimates that she has attended a half-dozen cooking classes with her husband over the last five years, gave Mangone’s demonstrations a good review.
“They’re a lot of fun, and Mario does such a great job,” she said.
Garwick said she liked the informal nature of the demonstrations. One thing she learned from Mangone was to buy food locally, to reduce her carbon footprint.
She enjoyed the intimate setting, and said Mangone was a good instructor.
“Mario answers all kinds of questions from the purely practical to a little off the wall.”
As for Mangone, he likes playing the teacher.
“I enjoy it,” he said. “I get a little nervous at times because I want to answer the questions that are being asked with conviction. It’s a big food world out there.”
Mangone said some students are already well educated about food.
“Some are novices and some are in fact trained chefs that have decided to go into different forms of employment but want to come back and see what’s happening in the food world,” he said.
Mangone has used the demonstrations as a way to give back to the community. He has donated classes to Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church and Lawrenceville Main Street, as well as a pair of Princeton organizations and the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. The groups auctioned off seats at the class to raise money.
“It’s a promotional piece for the restaurant, and certainly it’s community involved,” he said.
Each class costs $40 a person to attend, which buys the lesson, and the chance to eat the lesson. Mangone said the first class will likely be Sept. 21. Call Chambers Walk at (609) 896-5995 to sign up.
Chambers Walk shares meals and meal preparation tips Chambers Walk owner Mario Mangone leads a cooking class behind the restaurant’s display bar. (Photo courtesy of Laura Mangone.),
