Michelin star from prison?
Inmates at an Ohio prison who have a penchant for cooking conjured up a five-course meal and served it to the public over the weekend – a first in the state.
Nearly 60 people dined in the garden of Grafton Correctional Institution, where the fruits and vegetables they ate at this groundbreaking meal were grown by the inmates.
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
This once-in-a-lifetime experience was made possible by the prison’s EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute, which offers six-month cooking courses for inmates in 652 prisons and detention centers across the country, giving them the skills and certifications they need to work in a fine-dining restaurant.
Founder and Chef Brandon Crostowski said the program was born out of the belief that “every person, regardless of their past, has the right to a just and equal future” – an ideal felt by all at this memorable meal.
“They don’t see me as a number. They see me as a person,” Greg Sigelmier, 40, a GCI inmate, told the Associated Press.
A long, rectangular table, decorated with a white linen cloth, bouquets of flowers and fresh bread, was set up between the two gardens, which were called “EDWINS’ Garden” and “Hope City Garden”.
Guests from the local community were offered a starter of beetroot salad with goat’s cheese and greens, followed by a kale “pocket” with farmer’s cheese.
They were then treated to fried salmon with béarnaise sauce and braised garden vegetables. This was followed by roast lamb with Provencal tomatoes.
For dessert there was a corn cake with blueberry compote and whipped cream.
Each course was accompanied by a non-alcoholic cocktail, one of which was called “Botinique” – lemonade with thyme honey syrup and lemon.
Almost all of the bites were grown in the prison garden.
“Working together as a community and enjoying the food at the end is the best thing. You should see the faces of these guys when they just eat the regular chicken noodle soup that we all made together. It’s incredible,” said 28-year-old Efrain Paniagua-Villa.
Cooking was nothing new to Paniagua-Villa – he had already cooked regularly with his mother and sister before his imprisonment – but for him, cooking was a productive pastime.
He said cooking with EDWINS helped him fill the void left when he began his prison sentence two and a half years ago.
According to the organization, the men imprisoned in the EDWINS cooking program at GCI are serving prison sentences ranging from short to life imprisonment and are between 20 and 70 years old.
Some of the men have the opportunity to complete the program and apply for employment at many restaurants in the Cleveland area after their discharge.
“A lot of our guys that live here are going home, so they’re going home to be our neighbors. We want our neighbors to be prepared to be law-abiding citizens, and that’s what this program is about. It’s not just about teaching guys how to cook or how to prepare food,” said GCI Supervisor Jerry Spatny. “
This will provide them with the skills they need to re-enter the workforce so that they can be successful in that environment when they return home.”
