STATE COLLEGE — When Susan McWhirter and Lucy Alvarez’s 11-year-old daughters started taking over their kitchens to reproduce challenges from Food Network’s “Chopped” on a regular basis, the two friends knew they had to find an outlet for their girls to pursue their love of cooking. Locally, they could find a few short cooking camps or one-day workshops, but no consistent long-term offerings.
“Lucy continued to reference a place that she knew of when she used to live in Texas that was a studio you could go into and do cooking classes,” McWhirter said. “So, we just started to research it.”
A year and a half later, McWhirter and Alvarez are the owners of a Taste Buds Kitchen franchise, scheduled to open to the public Friday, Feb. 23.
According to McWhirter, Taste Buds Kitchen started in 2007 in New York City. The State College studio will be its ninth franchise location, and the first in Pennsylvania. The business will offer classes, summer camps, workshops and private parties for people of all ages, from 2 years old through adult. They will offer classes on school breaks and in-service days, and also plan to go off-site to offer after-school programming at schools in surrounding areas, she said.
“The neat thing about Taste Buds Kitchen is, it’s a kids’ kitchen by day, and an adults’ kitchen by night. So, we loved knowing that we could bring something to this town that was really something for everybody,” said McWhirter. “This is truly ‘culinary entertainment.’ It’s really just about providing an experience where people are able to put together recipes that everybody can do. It’s not something that you have to be a trained professional to be able to come in and prepare one of these meals.”
Adult events will be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and Sunday classes will alternate between brunch events and dinner events. All adult events are BYOB. During a typical adult class, a host will demonstrate three recipes.
“For example, in our Taste of Italy class, our host will demonstrate an eggplant parmesan, a mushroom risotto and cannolis,” McWhirter said. “Meanwhile, there will be assistants who are setting up equipment and ingredients at the tables, and everybody goes and actually prepares what was just demonstrated. … Then, the three courses are brought together, and everyone is able to savor what was actually made.
“It’s a time you’re able to connect with people without cellphones or distractions, and you’re able to prepare a meal and enjoy everybody’s company.”
Kids’ classes will be even more hands-on, without a demonstration happening behind a counter, according to McWhirter, and the youngest groups will involve both child and caregiver.
“We will sit with the 2- to 5-year-olds and the parents at the table, and they will actually mix their own ingredients, crack their own eggs, frost cupcakes,” she said.
“We find with the kids, if they make something, they’re so much more prone to eat it. So we incorporate so many great ingredients into the recipes. They’ll be making things like zucchini bread or mushroom frittatas. Things that, maybe at home, they’d never go near, but because they made it, they actually really enjoy it.
‘We’re exposing them to all new ingredients, and then giving the parents the tools so that they can actually go home and experience it themselves with their kids.”
Kids’ programs are generally broken down into age groups such as 2- to 5-year-olds, 5- to 8-year-olds, 9-year-olds to teens and teens. Family-style workshops also are offered. The studio seats approximately 42 participants.
McWhirter said the kitchen is completely nut-free and makes accommodations for people with food allergies, offering gluten-free, vegan and soy-free options. All of the menus are derived from 250 recipes that have been developed and provided by the Taste Buds Kitchen corporate headquarters.
The company is in the process of recruiting eight to 12 new staff members to serve as hosts and assistants, McWhirter said. She and Alvarez will be focusing much of their time on management, but, she added, “We really do want to have a key part in the kitchen, too. So there definitely will be classes that both Lucy and I will be instructing.”
Taste Buds Kitchen is located at 331 Benner Pike in State College, in the Walmart Plaza. On Friday, Feb. 23, Taste Buds Kitchen will hold its first public event, a homemade pasta class for adults, from 7 to 9pm. The following day there will be a grand opening open house from 3 to 6 p.m., which is free for the public to attend.
Registration is now open and a schedule of class offerings from February through May, as well as a listing of summer camps, is available online at http://tastebudskitchen.com/statecollege. The business is offering a “buy one, bring one” grand opening special for its first month.
Since the website went live earlier this month, McWhirter said, “the response has been overwhelming. Registrations have been coming in every day. The community has been so supportive. It’s really been humbling.
‘We’re just excited about being able to bring people into the kitchen.”
