Culinary Arts

CAMBRIDGE — In a basement lab at Harvard University, students Omar Bari and Aaron Mattis are playing with chocolate syrup. They put spoonfuls of the stuff into a bath of clear liquid, and wait as it turns into jiggling chocolate blobs. “I’m definitely going to do this at home,’’ Bari says. “My mom will be so impressed.’’ A few tables over, classmate Maddy Bates pops a shivering white sphere in her mouth. It’s made of Greek yogurt, with a chocolate-raspberry center.

WHO Louis DiBiccari WHAT DiBiccari, the chef at Boston's Storyville and host of the innovative dining challenge series Chef Louie Night, launches a new endeavor on June 3 from 2 to 6 p.m. called CREATE: Six Artists, Six Chefs, One Canvas, at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Six regional artists, including Josh Falk and Emily Lombardo, and Miracle 5, will be paired up with six chefs like Brandon Arms of Garden at the Cellar and Douglas Rodrigues of Clio to collaborate on dishes inspired by the artwork.

We are sitting in the dining room of a spacious, sunlit, modern apartment located only a few hundred steps from a high cliff overlooking the Pacific. Gazing through the floor-to-ceiling windows at palm trees and waves meeting the shore, we see that it would be easy to mistake Barranco, a middle-class district in the southern part of Peru's capital city, for an upscale California beach town like Marina del Rey or Santa Monica. Our lunch table looks like a page from Fine Cooking Photoshopped against the backdrop of a room whose decor is straight out of Architectural Digest.

The town's TRIAD program, which promotes senior citizen safety, will hold its annual fund-raising spaghetti dinner April 30 at Holy Cross Parish Center on Purchase Street. The dinner, from 4:15 to 7 p.m., helps fund the cooperative program of the Easton police, Bristol County Sheriff's Department, and the town's seniors. Tickets for the lasagna and spaghetti meal are $10 and are available at the door or by calling 508-238-3160. The Brockton High School Junior Jazz Band will perform.

PROVIDENCE - When Johnson & Wales University undertook to build a new culinary facility to replace its outmoded student kitchens and labs, the school's president had one request. "He wanted a ‘wow' building," recalls Nicholas Koulbanis, of the architecture firm Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, of Cambridge. And that is what Johnson & Wales got. The new 82,000-square-foot Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence is state-of-the-art, with, among other things, 30 teaching labs and classrooms, seven pastry and chocolate labs, three dining rooms, two bake shops, and a microbrewery lab. The...

Rhode Island students who are competing in a national culinary competition showed off their kitchen skills for a special guest. U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin (LAN'-jih-vin) met Thursday with the winners of the first annual Rhode Island ProStart Culinary Competition. The students compete later this month for nearly $1.4 million in scholarship money at a national culinary competition in Baltimore. Langevin visited with the students at Exeter Job Corps to highlight the potential for job growth in the culinary arts field.

For-profit occupational schools in Massachusetts could soon face greater state scrutiny. The schools offer nondegree programs in various fields such as culinary arts, photography, and automotive repair. Last year, 42 of the 209 for-profit schools in the state earned over $1 million in tuition revenues. Critics have accused for-profit schools nationwide of using misleading recruiting practices and encouraging students to take on student loans they can’t afford. The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Higher Education has recommended transferring oversight of the schools from the Education...

Newton North High School's student-run restaurant will reopen this week to students during lunchtime. School officials and the district's food contractor, Whitsons Culinary Group, agreed that the Tiger's Loft Bistro should be allowed to serve students, despite a clause in the food services contract that barred competition. Tiger's Loft, a long-established institution at Newton North, has been off-limits to students during lunchtime since late January, after Whitsons complained about the operation.

The town's TRIAD program, which promotes senior citizen safety, will hold its annual fund-raising spaghetti dinner April 30 at Holy Cross Parish Center on Purchase Street. The dinner, from 4:15 to 7 p.m., helps fund the cooperative program of the Easton police, Bristol County Sheriff's Department, and the town's seniors. Tickets for the lasagna and spaghetti meal are $10 and are available at the door or by calling 508-238-3160. The Brockton High School Junior Jazz Band will perform.

By Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff Newton North High School's student-run restaurant will re-open next week to students during lunch. School officials and the district's food contractor, Whitsons Culinary Group, agreed that the Tiger's Loft Bistro should be allowed to serve students, despite a clause in the food services contract that barred competition. "Whitsons was extremely positive and collaborative about it," said Sandra Guryan, the deputy superintendent. Tiger's Loft, a long-established institution at Newton North, has been off-limits to...

CONCORD — Nicole Dunn, who is 23 and lives in Watertown, will tell you straight out that she never read ‘‘Little Women" as a girl. That would qualify as a dirty little secret in Concord, home of Louisa May Alcott, who in 1868 wrote the book that became an international best-seller, read by millions of teenage girls and women. And yet, here is Dunn playing Jo March, the book's lead character, in the Concord Players' production of ‘‘Little Women. " The Players have done the play every 10 years for eight decades, except for 1942, during World War II. ‘‘I'd seen the movie but...

As a customer, Christine Golding says muffins at Cafe Riverview "are the best on the planet" and she's become a big fan of the orange-lavender variety since the place opened five weeks ago. "I applaud the Riverview School. … I love what they're doing here," Golding, a former special education teacher, said. "Here" is an airy, sunlit cafe with high ceilings, warm-colored wood and, on a recent Monday morning, the delicious smell of bacon announcing breakfast sandwiches in the making.

Rhode Island students who are competing in a national culinary competition showed off their kitchen skills for a special guest. U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin (LAN'-jih-vin) met Thursday with the winners of the first annual Rhode Island ProStart Culinary Competition. The students compete later this month for nearly $1.4 million in scholarship money at a national culinary competition in Baltimore. Langevin visited with the students at Exeter Job Corps to highlight the potential for job growth in the culinary arts field.

Newton North High School's student-run restaurant will reopen this week to students during lunchtime. School officials and the district's food contractor, Whitsons Culinary Group, agreed that the Tiger's Loft Bistro should be allowed to serve students, despite a clause in the food services contract that barred competition. Tiger's Loft, a long-established institution at Newton North, has been off-limits to students during lunchtime since late January, after Whitsons complained about the operation.

By Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff Newton North High School's student-run restaurant will re-open next week to students during lunch. School officials and the district's food contractor, Whitsons Culinary Group, agreed that the Tiger's Loft Bistro should be allowed to serve students, despite a clause in the food services contract that barred competition. "Whitsons was extremely positive and collaborative about it," said Sandra Guryan, the deputy superintendent. Tiger's Loft, a long-established institution at Newton North, has been off-limits to...

North Shore Community College is offering a free lecture and discussion entitled "Local Food is Power" from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Tuesday in the gym at its Lynn campus, 300 Broad St. A panel of speakers will discuss the economic, social, environmental, and health impacts of eating locally grown and prepared foods. The event, free and open to the public, will include samples of foods prepared by the college's culinary arts students using locally produced goods, including herbs grown by horticulture students.

America’s most famous tough-love arts teacher is probably Ms. Grant, the dance instructor Debbie Allen played in “Fame.’’ But I really wouldn’t want to see what Wilma Stephenson would do to her. Stephenson is the culinary arts instructor at Frankford High School in Northeast Philadelphia and the core of Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman’s “Pressure Cooker,’’ a very entertaining documentary about a year in her program. She’s a chic, light-skinned black woman with a short, sharp haircut, and of apparently small stature, although most of her male students could play a professional...

Organizers of the Salem Arts Festival are recruiting artists of all mediums to exhibit and perform in this year's festival, scheduled for June 1-3. Now in its fourth season, the festival is a local celebration of the arts, including painting, photography, sculpture, dance, music, writing, film, new media, theater, poetry, and culinary arts. The event, held at various venues in the city, is designed to promote arts in the downtown by giving local artists a chance to display and present their work.

Organizers of the Salem Arts Festival are recruiting artists of all mediums to exhibit and perform in this year's festival, scheduled for June 1-3. Now in its fourth season, the festival is a local celebration of the arts, including painting, photography, sculpture, dance, music, writing, film, new media, theater, poetry, and culinary arts. The event, held at various venues in the city, is designed to promote arts in the downtown by giving local artists a chance to display and present their work.

Newton North High School's culinary arts students are getting a taste of the competitive and complicated world of running a restaurant. The long-established, student-run Tiger's Loft Bistro was forced in late January to stop serving soups, sandwiches, and lunches to its most loyal customers: other students. While Tiger's Loft can still serve faculty, and is preparing to open up to the public soon, administrators have told students that the federal school lunch program's rules and the city's new contract with its vendor prohibit the restaurant from feeding other students during lunch.