Culinary students converge on Mitchell

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An intense, fast-paced culinary and business competition for high school students will be held today in Mitchell.

Eighty-one high school students will compete in the sixth annual South Dakota ProStart Competition. The top team from each division -- management and culinary -- will travel to Baltimore next month to participate in a national competition.

In the culinary portion of the competition, teams of students have just 60 minutes to get a three-course gourmet meal cooked and plated using butane stoves. Many of the state’s top chefs will be watching closely, scoring the teams on numerous factors including knife skills, presentation, taste, sanitation and teamwork.

Teams will also go head-to-head in a business management competition. They will give presentations on the steps they would need to take to start up a restaurant. In addition to presenting details about the layout, menu and pricing, they must also have a display board with diagrams. As audience members look on, food-service professionals will grill the teams about their business plans.

The competition will be held at the South Campus of Mitchell Technical Institute, and is open to the public at no charge. Following orientation sessions for teams and judges, events get under way at 8 a.m.

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