The Knights Tavern held a two-part event on Friday, April 25, 2025. The culinary class cooked food for the general public, and a cooking competition between Hillsborough High School, Strawberry Crest High School and Robinson was hosted in the culinary classroom.
The culinary student that represented Robinson was Jaleah Williams (’25) whose love for cooking started with watching Cooking Network when she was five. She joined the cooking program in 6th grade and still is cooking now in her senior year.
“Ever since then I just continued to cook for my family and friends, practicing my skills,” Williams said.
The competition started at about 7 p.m. while the dinner started at 6 p.m. The first twenty minutes of the competition was the competitors getting all of their ingredients together and the next hour was them cooking and preparing the food. In addition to the ingredients of the students’ choice, they had three mystery ingredients with no recipe.
“I was very nervous about not having a recipe and a time limit because I never cooked under these conditions before, but I was happy because I got to trust myself and use my own creativity to come up with something new and it worked out great,” Williams said.
Williams made a salad and tacos for her dishes and while she did get third place she still walked away with a $1,000 scholarship from the Epicurean Foundation, whose goal is to empower aspiring chefs with scholarships to better the culinary world. However, Williams may have found something better than a scholarship.
“I did not know Ivette [the competitor from Strawberry Crest] was going to the Culinary Institute of America like me, so we decided to be roommates. In all honesty, meeting her was my favorite part because talking to her felt like a breath of fresh air because of the openness and vulnerability and kindness that was shown. It was so nice meeting her and I think it was the start of a new friendship and I’m excited to see our journey together in college,” Williams said.
The event that was open to the public was a four-course dinner plus drinks and dessert. The menu was based around and used Florida ingredients such as key lime and groupers. Behind the scenes, there was the culinary class in the kitchen, with chefs making the food, servers going out to tables and bartenders making mocktails at the bar.
“We [the chefs] were making the fish [the grouper] and the spinach, and we also had the key lime puffs. We made our salad which had mango, mozzarella cheese and strawberries. With the fish we had a cappuccino sauce that chef wanted us to make, it was very sweet. I personally like it because it really complemented the fish. It went really well with it, and it was a good contrast,” culinary student Leanne Levene (’25) said.
Even though a double event seems difficult to manage, culinary teacher Mitchell Smithey had no problems with it, as the students were able to do most of the work without help. In fact, the culinary class as a whole was more excited than stressed to cook for the public.
“Oh they [the culinary students] love it [cooking for the public] they would rather us do more cooking for the public than doing events sometimes, I think. It’s more gratifying because it feels like the real world,” Smithey said.
Throughout the event it seemed like everyone was having a good time, no matter if they were a guest or a student. If not all then most of the tables were full with talking and laughing guests, and by the end of the event all the culinary students got to eat the food they created. However, Smithey does have plans on how to make it better for next time.
“It was very successful. We learned some things we had to work on for next time, especially technology aspects of it. The students competing did a great job, the students serving the food, my photographers, my camera people-everybody [did well]. It was awesome,” Smithey said.
