CHICAGO — “Dine well, do good.”

It’s a simple quote plastered in big, bold letters above Inspiration Kitchens’ service window in Chicago's East Garfield Park neighborhood. But it’s a value that extends beyond the front-of-house and out into the world, where students hope to land a job in the culinary industry after they’ve sharpened their knife skills and learned to chiffonade basil.

Chicago’s only full-service social enterprise restaurant supports Inspiration Corp.’s job training program, essentially a culinary school boot camp shortened and condensed to help individuals who have experienced poverty, homelessness or both get that foot in the door.

Nancy Phillips, chief program officer of Inspiration Corp., said the program’s ultimate goal is to give students a fair shot at finding success, despite socioeconomic barriers. Phillips said the training opens doors to jobs across industries in food. Former students — including six from the most recent cohort — have found employment bussing at restaurants, working in the prepared foods department at grocery stores, cooking in cafeterias in schools and hospitals, doing inventory for a supermarket, and one former student now works at Avec.

“Culinary school is about two years — this is 12 weeks,” said Beatrice Maldonado, chef instructor and employment specialist at Inspiration Kitchens. “It’s not for someone who is just enthusiastic about food and home cooking. Our program is not just a ‘learn to cook,’ — it’s training to cook and operate at a high, commercial level.”

After earning their ServSafe Food Handler certification in week one, students begin with basic culinary techniques, such as knife techniques and proper sanitation practices. The initial four weeks focus on lectures, demonstrations, experiential learning, and career development activities, including resume writing and interview practice.

Monday through Thursday, chef instructors show students how a kitchen runs. Students rotate working the kitchen line, prepping ingredients for dishes on the restaurant’s menu, or exploring recipes as part of their training.

A hallway separates the restaurant from the staff offices. It is covered in culinary terminology — words such as “amuse-bouche” and “consommé.” A bulletin board holds job notices for a line cook and catering gig at Boka Restaurant Group, and a few calls for bussers.

One recent fall afternoon, the students, all over the age of 18, were about to dive into scones, the seemingly simple baked good that’s a solid teaching tool for foundational baking skills, said lead chef instructor Scott Wittkopf. Mastering the proper technique results in a flaky, tender crumb, while small mistakes result in a tough and dense dough.

Students were spread out across the kitchen, each with a recipe sheet, while Wittkopf explained why the butter needs to be cold. Some students, such as Joey Schroeder, were extending themselves beyond the scones. Schroeder, 29, was peeling and chopping dozens of peaches that were recovered from the Green City Farmers Market earlier in the week.

Each week, they collect items from the market that would otherwise go to waste. They had recovered 751 pounds of produce and were finding ways to use the vegetables and fruit. The peaches would be turned into jam to accompany the freshly made scones.

While measuring cranberries and white chocolate chips, student Jaclyn Shortoff, 45, said she had never made a proper scone before, despite having worked in pastry for 12 years.

Shortoff, a Connecticut native, graduated from the now-defunct Lincoln Culinary Institute in Hartford, followed by stints at a few small bakeries before landing at Foxwoods Resort and Casino. While Shortoff shared her origin story, a classmate came by to add a footnote: “She’s baked for famous people!”

The students quickly become like family to one another, said Phillips.

“They come from myriad backgrounds, but here they share a goal of making their future better,” she said.

In June 2024, on the heels of an abusive relationship, Shortoff left the East Coast with little to no money to move south to Louisiana for a fresh start, also leaving behind a turbulent relationship with her two adult children. She scheduled a multi-leg journey with a stop in Chicago, but it took an unexpected turn.

“I was at Union Station and I had my money out and somebody saw it … they ended up robbing me,” she said. “So I actually got stuck here in Chicago.”

The robbery triggered Shortoff’s trauma-induced psychosis, she said. She ended up in the emergency room and was transferred to the psychiatric unit. After 21 days, Shortoff was sent to the overnight shelter at the Garfield Community Center.

Case workers secured a bed for Shortoff at Deborah’s Place, the women’s housing assistance shelter where she stayed for three months. Deborah’s Place helped Shortoff find housing in a studio apartment in the South Shore neighborhood, where she’s been since last October. It also introduced her to Inspiration Kitchens.

Two weeks before the Inspiration Kitchens program concluded in November, Shortoff landed a job at Sweet Mandy B’s in Streeterville, preparing ingredients and supporting the bakery’s pastry chefs. But a month into the role, she was let go.

“They said it just wasn’t the right fit,” she said. It was a gut punch for Shortoff, who hoped the job would finally give her the consistency and confidence she’d lacked for so long.

But Shortoff said she’s happy to land back where it all started: Recently, Inspiration Kitchens offered her a front-of-house position that pays $17 an hour. Though her end goal is to work in a kitchen, she said the program changed her life.

“I’m the happiest I’ve been in over 10 years,” Shortoff said. “I feel like I finally belong somewhere.”

Shortoff will soon be waiting tables on Fridays and Saturdays, when the Inspiration Kitchens restaurant is open for brunch.

The star of the menu is the shrimp and grits, according to head chef Antwain Lee, a former student of Inspiration Corp.’s job training program. Regular customers swing by specifically for the warm, cheesy grits with collard greens. There are salads featuring Brussels sprouts and fried green tomatoes, smashburgers and fried chicken sandwiches, gumbo, omelets and buttermilk pancakes.

A section of the menu is reserved for “Collaborative Cuisines” — sandwiches students created alongside the chefs. For now, there’s a grilled chicken Cubano and a vegetarian sandwich on focaccia with grilled zucchini, squash, eggplant, roasted tomato, spinach, arugula, pesto and balsamic glaze.

Phillips said Inspiration Corp. makes do with a combination of private and public funds and a single-digit percentage of earned income from the restaurant.

Traffic at the restaurant could be better, Lee noted, a concern not too different from many other eateries across the city. On Fridays, Inspiration Kitchens averages around 25 customers and on Saturdays, a little less than that.

Inspiration Kitchens other location in Uptown closed in 2016 due to struggles to remain viable because of dwindling public support for homelessness and low-income populations.

Margot Niebes, Inspiration Corp.’s associate director of external relations, said that for 35 years, the nonprofit has found ways to bolster services for vulnerable communities, but the core principles have remained the same as in 1989 when Lisa Nigro, a Chicago police officer, started walking the streets of Uptown with her nephew’s Radio Flyer wagon filled with coffee and sandwiches for people in need. Inspiration Kitchens keeps a Radio Flyer red wagon at the front entrance as a reminder of where it all started.

Over the years, that wagon grew into a van, then a bus, and eventually a full-service cafe for people experiencing homelessness. Three decades later, the organization still embodies Nigro’s values, Niebes said, now fully investing in individuals looking for a sustainable career in food service. During the first week of class, students complete a resource assessment to indicate where they need support, she said.

“There’s a myriad of different circumstances that folks are dealing with when they come here, our team is really trying to help them as a whole person,” Niebes said.

If students need their vision checked before working on their knife skills, case managers can help set up an appointment with an eye specialist. If a student needs cell phone minutes, Inspiration Kitchens will try to foot the bill. For students who need to wash their clothes, the facility has a fully equipped laundry area. If someone needs a shower, there’s a place for that too.

For Ashanti Jones, a 23-year-old student who lives in East Garfield Park, Inspiration Kitchens provides a $25 gas card so her mom can drop her off at the West Side facility. Jones said the program has given her financial freedom to develop interpersonal skills, while also boosting her resume.

During weeks eight through 12 of the program, Inspiration Corp. will pay a student’s wages even if they’ve been placed with an off-site employer. The hope, Niebes explained, is that the student will eventually get hired full time.

As was the case for Jesus Rosario, a graduate of Inspiration Kitchens’ second-to-last cohort of the year. Rosario was sent to intern at the Burnham Yacht Club, and a few weeks later, the gig turned into a job.

“To be 100% honest, I was expecting to finish the two-week internship and then just be at square one — like OK, now it’s time to look for a job,” Rosario said.

Rosario is working as a line cook with Burnham Yacht Club executive chef, Corey Rice, whose resume boasts several TV appearances.

“I wasn’t familiar with chef Corey until I got there, but I did my due diligence — I went, ‘holy cow, he was on ‘Chopped!’” Rosario said with a laugh, also noting his boss’s 2016 “MasterChef” Season 7 appearance representing Chicago’s West Englewood neighborhood.

Rice said Rosario, 28, is a “special talent.” He often catches Rosario in the kitchen after hours, practicing knife skills or going over new recipes for the menu’s short rib bourguignon or lobster pot pie. Rosario said he embraces smaller, yet essential tasks such as peeling potatoes or plucking cilantro leaves, or practicing how to swipe sauce on a plate.

“He’s still a little green, as we like to say in the kitchen, but his work and dedication and the effort that he puts in day in and day out … how he’s learned to be innovative. He has that gift,” Rice said. “That’s what I like to see come out of the program. Those that are hungry, not just to cook, but making sure that not only are we putting something out that’s good on a plate, but it’s also good from the heart. Because that’s how we feed people.”

At the private club, Rice has employed four students over the past three years of his partnership with Inspiration Corp. The social enterprise has several partners across the city, including Rush University Medical Center and Eataly Chicago, which work with employment specialists at the nonprofit to help students find work.

Though food was in Rosario’s genes (his grandfather owned Las Tres Cucharas in the ’80s), his initial plan was to get into filmmaking. He attended Flashpoint Chicago, a branch of the liberal arts school Columbia College Hollywood that no longer exists. The COVID-19 pandemic derailed Rosario’s post-grad plans, and even finding small jobs around local film sets became difficult. Rosario said he considers himself a “creator, first and foremost,” so he started tinkering with the idea of another creative outlet — one that could honor his family’s roots.

His mom, who helped out in the kitchen at Las Tres Cucharas, nudged him toward getting into a culinary program.

“The rest is history,” he laughed. “It was a bit of a rude awakening in the best way, because I felt like (the program) was the missing piece to the puzzle. In life, we’re always going through this journey of trying to learn about who we are and how to be better and I think that’s what I’ve just been trying to do.”

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