From prison to Michelin star?
Cooking-loving inmates at an Ohio prison cooked a five-course meal over the weekend and served it to the general public for the first time in the state.
Around 60 people dined in Grafton Prison's garden space, an innovative meal in which the fruits and vegetables they ate were actually grown by the inmates themselves.
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections
This unique experience was made possible thanks to the prison's EDWINS Leadership Restaurant Institute, which offers six-month culinary courses to inmates from 652 prisons and jails across the country, equipping them with the skills and qualifications needed to work in fine dining restaurants.
Founding chef Brandon Chrostowski said the program was born from the belief that “everyone, regardless of their past, deserves a fair and equal future,” an ideal that was embodied by all throughout the monumental meal.
“They don't see me as a number, they see me as a person,” said Greg Shigelmier, 40, an inmate at GCI. He told the Associated Press.
Between the two gardens, named “Edwin's Garden” and “Hope City Garden”, a rectangular table was set up, decorated with a white linen cloth, bouquets of flowers, and freshly baked bread.
Local guests were served a beet salad with goat cheese and greens to start, followed by “poached” kale with farmer's cheese.
Next came roast salmon topped with béarnaise sauce and steamed vegetables, followed by roast lamb Provencale with tomatoes.
Dessert included corn cake with blueberry compote and chantilly cream.
Each course is accompanied by a mocktail, including one called “Bottinique,” a soda with thyme-flavored honey syrup and lemon.
Most of the bites were grown in the prison garden.
“The best moment is working together as a community and eating the food at the end. You should see their faces when they're eating a simple chicken noodle soup that we all worked together to make. It's incredible,” said Efrain Paniagua Vila, 28.
Cooking was not unusual for Paniagua Villa — he cooked meals regularly with his mother and sister before his incarceration — but it became a rewarding pastime.
He said cooking at EDWINS has helped him fill the emotional void left when he began his prison life two and a half years ago.
According to the organization, inmates participating in GCI's EDWINS cooking program are serving sentences ranging from short to life sentences and range in age from 20 to 70.
Some of the men complete the program upon their release and have the opportunity to work in one of the many restaurants in the Cleveland area.
“Many of our peers who live here go back home and become our neighbors, and we want to prepare our neighbors to be law-abiding citizens, and that's what this program is about – it's not just about teaching them how to cook and prepare food,” said GCI Director Jerry Spatney.
This will equip them with re-employment level skills to be successful in their new environment when they return home.”
