On Feb. 21, senior Massimo Ragonese led his Singapore-inspired Culinary senior dinner. The dinner was a $75 prix fixe 7-course tasting menu. Ragonese focused the menu on Singaporean styles and flavors, including many staple Singaporean dishes such as Teh Tarik and Chik Kut Teh, as well as flavors from Pandan, Yuzu, and Wakame.
Chef Zach Lorber leads the culinary program at State High and serves as a co-advisor for SkillsUSA. The Culinary Dinner project began under his teaching.
“All the senior dinners are the capstone project for the seniors in culinary four. So if they’ve been with me through the years, they do a restaurant dinner. Massimo did his solo, which is not typical,” Lorber said.
The senior dinners are the capstone projects from all of the students’ years in culinary programs, where they can showcase all of the skills that they have learned. The student(s) is/are responsible for organizing and leading all aspects of the dinner, from conception to menu planning to production. A duo or trio of students does most senior dinners, but Lorber encouraged Ragonese to run the dinner all on his own.
“[The senior dinner] becomes the biggest part of their senior year, so the planning, the recipe testing, the recipe development, planning, marketing and ticket sales, ambiance, decor, tables settings,” Lorber said.
The dinner was made up of seven courses.
The first course was a trio of oysters, flown in from Island Creek, Maine. The first oyster, the Moon shoal, had saffron espuma with a salmon roe and sauteed leek.
The second, the West Island oyster, was sturgeon caviar with pickled watermelon radish. The third, the Beach Plum oyster, had reconstituted wakame and ginger. The second course was Chik-Kut-Teh, a traditional Singaporean mushroom stew, with fried enoki and steamed tofu. The second course was paired with bread—marbled matcha and black sesame milk bread and a chive roll with lemongrass butter.
The third course was soy-glazed steamed catfish with a frisee-gai lan salad and toasted almonds. The fourth course was a Kombu-cured Scallop Crudo with Thai basil-chive oil and uni roe, garnished with fennel fronds. The fifth course was chicken-curry stuffed squid with fried rice paper and viola petals.
The sixth course was a Teh Tarik Madeleine cake with pandan ice cream and a honey tuile. The seventh course was a trio of mousse cakes, each structured as a chiffon case frozen in two layers of mousse before being glazed and garnished.
“I think the dinner went really well. We had some hiccups but we expected that, and got through it” Ragonese said.
Ragonese was the only one working on his dinner, and that put a lot of weight on his shoulders. Despite the lack of help with planning, the dinner went smoothly and the hiccups that did happen were handled by either Ragonese or Chef Lorber.
If you wish to attend one of these senior dinners and support the culinary program, check out the Japanese dinner by Tristian Rogers and Cole Fuller on March 21, 2025.
