AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas is close to having its first Michelin-star restaurant, with several cities, including Austin, becoming featured destinations. The announcement could benefit not only restaurant-goers but also local culinary students.
Jamie Vaughn, a culinary arts educator with Austin ISD, spoke with KXAN about Austin’s recent recognition in the Michelin Guide, which could create more job opportunities for students and allow them to train at Michelin-star restaurants in Texas.
Read an edited transcription of the conversation below or use the video player above to watch.
KXAN: Talk to us about the program with Austin ISD. What is it? And how long has it been around?
VAUGHN: We’re heading into our 24th year with Hospitality and Culinary Arts at Travis Early College High School, and it is a dynamic program because it’s a community program. Travis is a true community school in the heart of Austin. It’s been around since 1953. You can’t go anywhere that you don’t find somebody who hasn’t graduated from Travis or worked at Travis.
But more than that, we have so many great business partners for our hospitality and culinary students. We work with the Visit Austin Foundation, the Austin Restaurant Association, and the Hotel and Lodging Association. It’s a unique program, and our students not only train in our classes, they go out into the industry in Austin. So, they’re interning at local hotels, like the Hilton and the Fairmont and Visit Austin and in local restaurants.
We also have a unique program called a P-TECH (Pathways in Technology), which is different than most high school programs. The opportunity we wanted for our students was for them to get a college degree while they were getting their high school degree. So we’ve partnered with ACC, and students can enroll in AISD, Travis, and get their degree in hotel and restaurant specialization while they’re at Travis for free. So they’re taking classes simultaneously.
KXAN: We want to focus on your students. Tell us about what some of their dreams are, and maybe why they participate in the program.
VAUGHN: I just get emotional because our students are so funny and they’re talented and they’re hard-working. Their dreams are not much different than your dreams in high school or mine, which was—they’re trying to figure out what their passions are. What do they want to do? And how can they get there?
We’ve got just incredible faculty and staff at Travis. They get to know every single student and so do their mentors out in the hotel and restaurant industry. And they say, ‘What do you like, how can we help you get there?’ And the students just really thrive. I mean, they really just meet every goal they have for themselves and that we have for them. They’re just excited about the industry, and we’re happy to help them on that path.
KXAN: The Michelin Guide naming Austin as one of its feature destinations—What kind of opportunities could this huge announcement provide for the students that you work with?
VAUGHN: This is so big for our students and their families and our community. First, we know what’s going to bring tourism to Austin, right? I know some people are like no more tourists, no more cars. But tourism is so important to this community. It’s really what makes our community thrive, so for our students and their families, it means jobs.
Restaurants in Austin are the number one private employer, and so it’s going to create more jobs for them. But more importantly, aspiring chefs can stay home if they want to train at a Michelin-star restaurant or with those chefs. We’ve always had great chefs in Central Texas.
If you had a student who was like, ‘I want to work at a Michelin-star restaurant,’ you had to send them out of state, and so for them now, we want them to stay here. We don’t want to lose their talents, so we want them to be able to train at Michelin star restaurants in Texas, and in Central Texas. We want them to then turn to give back to the community that raised them., so this is just incredibly exciting news for our school and our students and their families.
KXAN: Is there anything else that you want people to know anything else that people should know about the future of the program, how this might expand and even attract more students?
VAUGHN: The future of hospitality and culinary is just thriving, especially in Austin. When you look at the great community, they are not just operating in a silo, their stepping out to us insane. Send us the next generation. We want to train your students and we want to grow them here. Michelin is going to be a great opportunity for that. I want students to know that no matter where they are in Central Texas, they can come to AISD and come to Travis and be part of these dynamic programs and go on to work in a Michelin-star restaurant.