The setting in which I gazed upon the fried branzino entrée at Tatiana—the 2024 restaurant of the year, so named by former New York Times dining critic Pete Wells—was a dining room awash in purple LED hues generated by light fixtures that looked akin to kinetic sculptures. It felt more like a manic Saturday night, as the beats wafting over the dining room powered the choreography of the frontof- house staff, than the midweek hustle of the Wednesday evening in January when I visited.

The branzino had traveled mere feet from the brightly lit kitchen pass to my tenebrous situation at the bar. But metaphorically, that dish’s journey began some 4,200 miles away at the Community and Technical College (CTC) culinary arts and hospitality program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). That’s where the runner that night, Tierren Morris, 25, an alumnus of the program, began his culinary journey over two years ago.

FAIRBANKS TO THE BIG APPLE

That night, Morris was healing from a shoulder injury, but his usual responsibilities at the restaurant include searing cod and scallops and preparing sauces and stocks as a saucier, giving Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s African-and Caribbean-inspired dishes the sublime balance of sweet and spicy that supports the signature flavor profile of the menu’s entrées and small plates.

Morris learned about Tatiana in class at UAF’s CTC, and while he is a first-generation American born in Georgia, his mother is from Trinidad and his father is from Guyana. The mission of the restaurant—elevated Caribbean- and Afro-inspired gastronomy, “spoke to my culture,” he said. “I wanted to be part of that.” When he started at the restaurant, he marveled that traditional Trinidadian dishes like roti (a Trinidadian staple flatbread) and curried crab found a star billing in a fine-dining setting.

In Fairbanks, Morris perfected the ins and outs of fundamental culinary techniques, including harnessing the power of the Maillard reaction, the process of imbuing tender pastry dough or a succulent piece of protein with a toothsome crust by caramelizing exterior sugars.

“I felt at home and confident in the kitchen after my training,” he said. That training laid the groundwork for Morris’s ability to rise to his current position in a high-energy, bustling kitchen.

“Now if somebody were to throw a cod at me, I feel like I’d be able to cook it pretty well,” he said.

Associate Professor and Chef Sean Walklin heads the culinary arts and hospitality program at UAF, and he inspires students to reach for goals that might appear out of their comfort zone. Walklin is a voracious traveler and it’s not uncommon for him to travel to gastronomic hot spots in Italy and New York every three or six months. His penchant for inspired cooking is unwavering in the attitude he brings to the classroom.

“We want our students to have the foundation needed to achieve great things, whether that is starting a food truck, managing a tourism business, or going to work in the best restaurants in the United States,” Walklin said.

AN ESTABLISHED RESTAURATEUR

Not all students in the program travel as far afield as Morris. Walklin’s classes are often filled with local restaurateurs from the Fairbanks area, and it’s common for students to come from established and popular restaurants, such as the pub-focused Pump House, finer dining at the now-defunct Lavelle’s, and the gluten-free bakery Little Owl, to up their cooking game.

Alla Gutsul owns and operates Soba in a downtown shopping plaza in Fairbanks. She is currently enrolled in the CTC program and has taken classes to explore ways to refine her menu and elevate entrées and side items.

“I always look for things to improve in the restaurant,” said Gutsul. Throughout the program, Gutsul has pushed herself creatively in small ways that add up to an overall refined gastronomic experience.

“I definitely incorporated more hors d’oeuvres after the class,” she said of her catering menu.

She also incorporated sauces into a pork entrée and started getting more creative with charcuterie boards. The classes are also a way to leverage the stellar local products available in Alaska. Students work with the local meats and seafood, including oysters, local salmon, halibut, and pork.

Aside from working with high-quality ingredients, the class gave Gutsul the ability to practice techniques.

“The practice and the knowledge you gain in class, you see the way to improve,” she said. “So I feel like the students really get a lot from going to school, no matter what level you start at.”

INDIGENOUS-FOCUSED FOOD TRUCK

Odin Peter-Raboff and his partner, Joana Romero Cupul, are already entrepreneurs in the Fairbanks area as owners of local lodging and a screen-printing business. They looked to the CTC culinary arts program at UAF to obtain the skills to start Diishi, a seasonal food truck that focuses on Indigenous food traditions that evoke familiar flavors in an elevated way.

Peter-Raboff is Alaska Native, Gwich’in and Koyukon, and Cupul hails from the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

“We have some ideas of maybe having juices, maybe smoothies would be great. And there’s a lot of Native American fruits, and, you know, we have pineapple and papaya and blueberries and apples and kiwi, so we have a lot of really great options for being able to offer fruit,” said Peter-Raboff. “And hopefully, like one of the things that we’ve really learned in school is how to elevate recipes, too, right? To bring in new flavors [to customers].”

Cupul hopes to eventually add tamales, a nod to her Mayan heritage, but with an Alaska twist: wild blueberry and salmon tamales.

BAKING IN ANCHORAGE

As the aptronym suggests, baking has been in Kellie Puff’s bones since she was a little girl. As associate professor of baking and pastry arts, she’s led the baking and pastry arts program at University of Alaska Anchorage since 2018.

As a small child she desperately wanted an Easy-Bake Oven, but her mother feared the poor electrical construction of the appliance and its propensity for electrical fires. So, Puff was relegated to using the normal-size oven with her Lilliputian pans. It’s cookware that remains in her possession to this day as a reminder of how far she’s come since she was a kid baker, now teaching others about baking and pastry arts.

Puff cut her teeth in the restaurant scene at legacy Anchorage establishments like Orso and Kincaid’s before turning to academia. Along her trajectory in commercial kitchens, she felt glimmers of how much she appreciated teaching. Whether it was helping fellow classmates as a student, or at a televised summer chef series filmed at Allen and Petersen, she found sharing knowledge filled her cup. It was her foray into television that caused Puff to realize that she was “smiling so much and laughing” until her face hurt, she said. “I guess that was my a-ha moment.”

Puff’s aspirations for the baking program at UAA go beyond teaching in the Anchorage community, where she has been a culinary presence for over two decades either in the classroom or in restaurants.

“We want to be the resource that people turn to to help educate and train their motivated and passionate employees,” she said. Walklin dreams big for his students as well. “As someone who grew up in small-town Fairbanks, I know how important it is to show students that they can achieve great things,” said Walklin. “Anything is possible when you combine knowledge with hard work.”

COOKING SCHOOLS IN ALASKA

Alaska’s two largest universities offer degrees and certifications in culinary arts.

University of Alaska Fairbanks
Community and Technical College

University of Alaska Anchorage
Culinary Arts

AVTEC, the Alaska Vocational and Technical Center
in Seward and Alaska Technical Center in Kotzebue both offer programs in Culinary Arts.