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Professional Chef Creates Five-Star Fifth Graders

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - The music, the menus, the flowers, the fine touches, this doesn't look like a school cafeteria.

Appetizers? Fancy salads? This is no brown bag food.

Students served "ants on a log" (peanut butter celery with little raisins), baked potatoes with onions and bacon.

We asked one student about drink pairings.

"Milk, yeah, milk would be a great thing," he said.

It's hard to resist, but these kids are eating up the experience of what it's like to run a high end gourmet dining hot spot as Oak Ridge Elementary in Oak Park becomes The five-star restaurant with fifth graders running the show.

Sacramento top chef Patrick Mulvaney adds the ingredient of expertise.

What does Mulvaney learn from doing this?

"Well what you learn from the kids is patience, but you learn too, it's like a reigniting of your excitement," said Mulvaney.

For some of these children this process has given their imaginations a kick start. They're starting to think about their future and what they might want to do.

One student said, "you could get to learn how to cook and get a good opportunity to start a business."

Another student wants to open up a bakery, and another wants a nice fancy restaurant.

Clearly I'd pay and it's clear this experience, like the fine ingredients from a perfect meal, will linger, digested and ingested into young minds who got a taste for success.

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