Celebrating Jada Barrett
Jada Barrett is a woman on a mission, focused on accomplishing goals and working her way up in her career. A mother of three children under the age of five, Jada spends her days in the CC Pearce Culinary School at Project Host learning and earning her ServSafe certification, and her nights and weekends working at Copper River Grill. Her husband, Ashtin, supports Jada as a stay-at-home dad while simultaneously pursuing a degree in business.
Jada came to Project Host through a tip on a Facebook group for young professionals in Greenville when she inquired about how to get her ServSafe certification, and she found so much more in the six weeks she spent in the culinary school than she ever would’ve expected: “I’ve loved this experience. It’s been awesome. The people, just coming here every day to their positive energy—it’s just been fun. I’m really sad that it’s ending.”
Chef Marianne can attest to the great energy and relationships built among this cohort
“They all worked so well together as a team, and they are always pulling each other up. Where one leaves off, another picks up. It’s been great to see that effort. There’s a lot of love among all of them. They can all joke around or be serious, and they rub off on each other and share things about themselves that they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s been really cool to see how everyone takes care of each other. They’ve become a little family in the six weeks they have been together.”
To celebrate Jada’s milestone of graduating our program on February 12, we sat down with her to talk about her experience in the culinary school and her plans for the future.
How did you learn about the culinary program at Project Host? What made you sign up?
I work at Copper River Grill, and I really like it. Before that, I was a security guard for five years, so it’s a really big change of pace, but I’m doing something I actually enjoy doing. I found out about Project Host while looking for where I could get ServSafe certified. I’m getting trained on all the stations at work, and I am hoping the certification will help in being promoted to a manager position.
What’s been the best part of your experience in the Project Host culinary school?
I’ve loved the entire experience. There’s no best part because it’s all been really fun. The students that I’m with are great. Marianne is great. If I had to name something, learning new dishes has been the best part. Learning different seasonings and ways to use them has been rewarding, because a lot of things we made here, I would’ve never made at home. I wouldn’t have known how to cook it or how to season it, but now I’ve learned a lot about a lot of different new foods.
(Here too, Chef Marianne agrees: “I like how Jada likes to stretch herself, like she did for the Community Dinner. She cooked something that she has never cooked before: She’d never worked with pork other than bacon, and so she learned smoking and she made a special BBQ sauce and pineapple butter and just went all out. She cooks without barriers, and that’s awesome.”)
What have you learned in terms of soft skills?
Time management. Chef Marianne is big on schedules and time management. Even when she couldn’t be here the other day and we worked with Chef Linda, Marianne wrote out everything we should do and the time in which we should have it done. Time management is a poor skill of mine, so she really helped me with that. The team gets everything done really quickly and most of the time we are ahead of schedule.
How do you feel about doing meal prep for Cooking for Kids?
I loved that. My kids wouldn’t eat half of the stuff that the kids eat in Cooking for Kids. They have some really great palates if they eat all of what we cook; Chef Marianne is in touch with the sites and the kids eat it and like it. I wish I could get my kids to eat the foods out of the Cooking for Kids program!
If you could make any specialty item to serve out of the Bakery or off the HostMobile food truck, what would it be?
I just started making a really awesome California burrito. There’s a Mexican restaurant across the street from where I live, and my husband really wanted one of their California burritos one day, and I just looked at him and said, “Yeah, but we’re broke. I can just make it for cheaper.” So I bought all the stuff to make it and they came out tasting so good. My husband said, “When you open a restaurant, you need to put this on your menu.”
We certainly hope Jada is putting her creations on menus soon, and we are so proud and fortunate to have gotten to be a part of her journey along the way!
By Claudia Winkler