Order's Up! South Seattle College Culinary Students Gain Experience Through Food Truck
Note: The following first appeared in the Seattle Colleges Foundation’s “The College Minute” newsletter.
No matter how diligently he prepares them, David Hatfield says he inevitably still sees his Culinary Arts students fail that first Monday when their food truck is open for business.
“One hundred percent of the time it’s a challenge,” Hatfield says. “Tears. A lot of stress.”
That first day is the soft opening, the culmination of five quarters of instruction at South Seattle College. Suddenly every decision about the five-item food truck menu they’ve designed, and the work team they’ve assembled, gets ruthlessly tested — because there are actual customers who have ordered lunch and are expecting to eat what they’ve actually ordered.
Hatfield consistently stresses to students about how much they need to be organized and prepared. “Lots of moving parts,” he explains. But still, there was that time when a student’s food truck concept was empanadas…various kinds. “I said, ‘They all look the same. You gotta label them because once they’re deep fried, how are you going to know which is which?’"
“They said, ‘Yeah Chef, we got it.’”
Then Monday happened.
“Nobody got the right order. For Tuesday, they knew they had to have a better system.”
Hatfield, 53, sits in the college’s Alhadeff Dining Room, with its pentaptych of grapes and pears on one wall, a desert landscape polyptych on another, and tiny salt and pepper shakers accenting all the fourtops. The room doubles as the classroom for the Management Practicum class, aka Food Truck Class. He's taught it since 2020.
In most culinary schools, it’s fine dining that’s celebrated. And indeed that used to be the capstone project in the Culinary Arts program at South, which began in 1975. “But we realized during the pandemic it wasn’t pertinent to a lot of students,” Hatfield says. “They wanted something trendier. They wanted the business side of things. So we transitioned to this more popular concept and it was really well received.”
Some 45 students have taken the Food Truck class, which is equal parts creative — coming up with a restaurant name, a logo and designing a menu poster — and practical — costing out food items.
Hatfield describes himself as a “horrible critic,” when, in fact, he’s an excellent one. “I pay attention to all the details. Everyone knows I’m brutally honest in a nice way. I have pages and pages of notes every day. We go through them and talk about what went wrong.”
But sometimes, he’s the one getting schooled. He remembers a student who wanted to make her Cuban grandmother’s cupcakes using a boxed cake mix. “I told her I thought she should make it from scratch. She made it, and it was marginal. Then she used the box mix and it was amazing!” He laughs. “Sometimes grandma’s recipe is better than hoity-toity French cuisine. If a student brings in a family recipe, I don’t change it.”
Hatfield was recruited for the role by Brian Scheehser, dean of Culinary Arts at South. It extends a working relationship that goes back decades. In 1998, the day after Hatfield finished culinary school at Seattle Central, Scheehser hired him to work at Hotel Sorrento, where he was then executive chef.
The two stayed in touch as Scheehser went on to other roles, notably executive chef at Trellis in Kirkland's Heathman Hotel, where he was a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Best Chef Northwest award.
About six years ago, Scheehser called up Hatfield looking for a substitute instructor. “And the rest is history,” Hatfield says. “I’ve taught all the classes in the program. I was one of two instructors during the pandemic.”
Upon arriving to South Seattle, Hatfield brought with him his expertise of having owned restaurants, run catering companies and overseen music, wine and food events. He’s also raised two boys and was a longtime Boy Scouts leader.
“I have always been around youth. With my own restaurants, I’ve taken employees, trained and mentored them. I’ve always been a teacher.”
In addition to teaching students knife skills and the importance of recipe testing, Hatfield offers life skills. Like, how to wash a chef coat and iron it.
He says he’s like so many college faculty members.
“We’re life cheerleaders. We build them up. We tell them how to get up on time, show up to class and the integrity of being there every single day.”
This past spring, Hatfield’s students were the first class to operate out of a storied Seattle food truck: Big Blue, which launched Marination in 2009 and was one of two donated by the restaurant owners last year. Big Blue, which was lovingly bid farewell in an Instagram post, was refurbished by Automotive Technology students on campus. Now, during the five weeks of Food Truck Class, you'll find it in South's Clock Tower Square as Culinary Arts students serve everything from poke wonton nachos to duck confit bánh mi.
Every day, without fail, the food sells out.
This article was reported and written for the Seattle Colleges Foundation by freelance journalist Florangela Davila, whose career includes stints as a Seattle Times reporter and newsroom director for Crosscut and NPR affiliate KNKX.