At first glance, all that's missing are some of those Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri types.

Otherwise, welcome to the expanded and completely refurbished Whaler Café culinary program at New London High School. Costing an estimated $1.2 million as part of the overall $108 million project to renovate and expand the school, the kitchen and instruction space for Whaler Café is competitive with anything you'd see on the set of a Food Network or Cooking Channel show or, for that matter, in a fine-dining restaurant. It's painted a gleaming white and the multiroom facility is brightly lit, scrupulously clean and full of mostly new and shiny stainless-steel ovens, six-burner gas stoves, deep friers, pasta machines, a wok station and panini press, prep areas, freezers, sinks, and row after row of pots and pans, spatulas, whisks, kitchen knives and silverware and shelves crammed with spices.

The purpose of the Café, under the watchful and passionate guidance of Chef Tomm Johnson, a star in his own right and the man who visualized and implemented the program eight years ago, is to create not just chefs and the culinary stars of the future, but also folks who feel perfectly at home cooking for friends and family.

On a recent weekday morning, with classes starting two hours late due to COVID-related staffing concerns and icy roads leading into New London, Johnson, a kindly guy who fits just right in the time-honored chef's jacket, offered a guided tour of the new facilities. The entire school is undergoing construction, with completely new additions as well as significant renovations to existing areas. The culinary department, for example, used to be girls' locker room and, next door and not by accident, where the swimming pool used to be, is the new student cafeteria.

The Café, as the program is familiarly called, has three separate but connective kitchen areas as well as a small classroom for demonstrations and lectures. Walking from station to station and pointing out specific areas and the flavorful duties that are performed at each, Johnson paused and looked around — almost as though he couldn't quite believe it, himself.

"When I came here, I wanted to build a program like this, and I had a specific vision for it," he said. "Honestly, I had to go through a lot, and it was tricky. We started with what was available and what I had personally and what we could find. It's amazing to see it now."

Once again, COVID has skewed the numbers and normally fluid machinations of the school year. But Johnson said he teaches about 20 students a day and that about 200 typically will pass through the culinary kitchens in an average year.

On Wednesday, because of COVID-related staff shortages, students were delayed two hours starting classes. Johnson wasn't exactly sure if or when the day's session would start or who might show up. "That's the reality of COVID," he said. "Like everything else, it's had a big effect on what we're trying to do, but all you can do is make the best of it."

Properly seasoned curriculum

The curriculum for the Whaler Café program takes students through three levels. The first involves basics. In groups of four, students observe demonstrations at each station in a restaurant kitchen — from appetizers to line cooking and desserts — and gradually perform those tasks themselves with evaluations from Johnson and guest chefs.

Levels two and three are more sophisticated and specific and focus on production in a restaurant kitchen. Students might be expected to prepare a fine-dining meal for a group of 50, for example, and also will master more specific areas of study, such as breakfast cookery and any of several international cuisines.

"I don't think there are a lot of other school districts doing what we're doing, anywhere," Johnson said. "We're trying to give culinary college experience at a high school level."

In addition to the usual classroom and kitchen work offered, students also benefit from a variety of local chefs and caterers who offer guest lectures, demonstrations, hands-on instruction and evaluation. The Café has staged a number of pop-café events where they've sold their products, and the Café has participated and competed in the popular New London Food Strolls. Until COVID, certain Whaler Café products were sold at Shop Rite and Fiddlehead's — and hopes are that it will happen again when activities resume a degree of normalcy.

Whaler Café students have also done "shadow visits" to Mohegan Sun restaurants, where they follow casino chefs for a day and, at the end, have a meal with those professionals and discuss what they've seen and learned.

"I've gone down to work a few times with Chef Tomm's kids," said Shaun Houle of Mohegan Sun. After serving 11 years as executive chef at Tuscany, Houle recently was promoted and is chef de cuisine for all the Sun-owned restaurants in the casino. "Tomm is amazing and I'm absolutely impressed with his kids and how they interact with you. They have youthful energy but incredible maturity and a grasp of what it means to work in a kitchen. Food has always brought people together and the program at New London provides skills and a life lesson — and that's why we're glad to work with them and help when we can."

In that spirit, Mohegan Sun offers a program where Whaler Café grads are guaranteed an automatic job in the casino's hospitality department.

"The chefs and staff at Mohegan Sun have been so generous and enthusiastic," Johnson said. "I think it all indicates that there's no reason any of our students can't go directly to work at a restaurant or into an elite culinary program like Johnson & Wales," a private university in Providence.

But Johnson is quick to point out a valued aspect of his program's philosophy. "If a student doesn't want to be a chef, hey, I get that," he said. "It can be glamorous but it's hard work and it's a lot of hours. That's why part of what we do is to make sure students leave our program knowing the basics. They'll leave knowing how to cook and how the business works. They can cook for themselves or their family. And they can definitely get a part- or full-time job in the business if they need income to help them get through college or until something else comes along."

Many former Whaler Café alums are working in the dining business, Johnson said, and points to Josh Santiago as the first of the program's graduates to open his own restaurant. Santiago serves Puerto Rican cuisine in his popular Mi Familia in New London. Temporarily closed due to COVID concerns, Santiago could not be reached for comment.

He's trained for this moment

Johnson, 54, a Connecticut native who was born in Manchester and now lives in Canton, spent years learning and cooking global cuisines on site in locales like Mexico, Italy and the Far East, as well as across the U.S. He's cooked in a variety of restaurants and was executive chef at La Sirena in Westport before opting to go into teaching at culinary schools.

In addition to his position at New London High School, he has a popular online cooking show called "Culinary Secrets with Chef Tomm," and is a driving force in the citywide Whalers Helping Whalers, an organization that combines volunteers and local restaurants in helping to feed hungry and homeless folks.

"As you get older, you start to want to work to make a difference," he said. "I wanted to use my skills to help the community, and I wanted to work at a high school in an urban area that might need a fresh change and approach to the culinary arts. At the time, in New London, they had a home economics program with a long-term substitute teacher in charge. So it was a good situation to come into."

Johnson, not particularly familiar with the workings of a school district, pitched his idea for a new program directly to then-high school Principal William "Tommy" Thompson. "If it wasn't for Tommy, this wouldn't be happening, and we wouldn't be standing here. He believed in me and the program and members of the Board of Education were also particularly helpful."

It's particularly impressive to realize the new kitchens and facilities were approved and implemented, given tight budgets and inherent bureaucratic procedures. Too and specifically, the New London Public Schools district has undergone a lot of controversy and administrative and faculty turnover the last few years.

Most popular

"Part of the reason Tomm had success getting approval is simply because the program is popular with the kids. Tomm is popular with the kids," said Bryan Doughty, a city Board of Education member who often volunteers with the Whaler Café program. He met Johnson when Doughty's then-eighth-grade son was involved in some of Johnson's extracurricular cooking programs. "I instantly liked Tomm and believed in what he wanted to accomplish."

The price tag was part of the complex $108 million overall budget, and Doughty said the exact final amount for the kitchen would be difficult to say, as it involved overlapping expenditures with other departments — changing to electricity or installing gas lines throughout different areas of the building. Johnson said he heard estimates were around $1.2 million.

"Obviously, you also have cuts to what you propose," Doughty said. "If you're building a dream house, you have to make adjustments based on reality. Part of the situation is that the part of the high school housing the culinary program was already there. It was refitting and refurbishing rather than all new construction. Tomm had a lot of inventory that he moved over here, and there were contributions. The biggest thing was to switch from electric to gas for the stoves, but the state paid for that. A lot of the smaller things came out of the New London school budget, but it's hard to say at this point how much."

Johnson and Doughty also explained that traditional educational curriculum has changed.

"There are no more shop classes, for example, at New London High School," Doughty said. "Grasso Tech picked up a lot of those classes."

"This area looks big, and it is compared to what you'd expect from an old home economics department," Johnson said. "But at the same time, it's compact in the context of how a restaurant is laid out. That's part of the learning. In a restaurant, you make money with customer turnover. Every time you expand the kitchen area, you lose some space in the dining room, and that counts."

Listen up, class!

"Chef Tomm has a luxury in that he has a classroom and environment where he can establish a rapport and listen to the kids," Doughty said. "It's not a math class where there's a lot of flexibility. He's teaching something fun that's a hands-on process and connecting with kids on a human level. And, to be frank, the food they make and consume in the program is maybe in some cases the only food a kid will have all day."

Around 11 a.m. Wednesday, several Whaler Café students entered the demo room and got seated. "I guess we have class after all," Johnson laughed. He explained the fluid situation with staff absentees, that there is impending time off with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and how they'll get organized for the new semester.

The atmosphere is casual and relaxed. In response to a visitor's question, senior Anastasia Oliver said she'd entered the program because "I just like food. It seemed a good place to be."

The class laughed and it was revealed that Oliver's nickname is "Cajun."

There's a collective pause and it seemed the visitor was meant to ask the origin of the nickname. A passion for Louisiana cuisine, perhaps?

It was Johnson, grinning broadly, who finally said, "It's because she burns everything!" Everyone laughed again — Oliver as loudly as anyone.

Others shared their reasons why they entered the program.

"I heard about Chef Tomm my freshman year and immediately wanted to work with him," said junior Manny Goode. "And I'm glad I did. I've learned a lot, and this might be something I could definitely see myself doing."

Senior Shaira Castro said, "I liked the way (Johnson) interacted with students. My goal in taking the classes is I wanted to be able to cook anything at any time. It's useful and it can help out the family. And it's fun." Asked if she's a good cook, Castro said, "Yes, I am. I think we all can be in this environment."

A legacy and tradition

While COVID remains an unsettling and unsettled component to day-to-day life and has had a stop-and-go effect on the Whaler Café, the spirit and energy around the department is positive with a sense that momentum is slowly accelerating.

"One other thing that makes this different from the other culinary programs is that the kids here really want to do it," Doughty said. "They want to learn to cook and present. When we were getting ready for this new space, the kids were part of the scraping the floors and painting the walls. Now it's finished and we can say to them, 'Look what YOU guys did.' And they're invested in this and the food they make."

"We're trying to establish a legacy here," Johnson said. "New London is a small town and closely knit and word trickles down. This is the sort of program where you'll have newer generations follow parents or siblings or aunts and uncles, and they'll want to be part of it, like a football or marching band tradition. The reputation is growing and newer students will know ahead of time what we're about."

r.koster@theday.com