Steak for $10? SPSCC culinary students serve high-end lunches at bargain prices

Imagine sitting down to lunch chosen from a menu including salmon with blood orange gastrique, paella, chicken in cider cream sauce — oh, and daily specials including coffee-crusted New York steak.

Imagine your meal begins with an amuse-bouche, a free one-bite appetizer.

Imagine the restaurant serving this upscale fare is right here in Olympia and that the cost of entrées starts at $7.

No, this isn’t a story about an imaginary restaurant — though it sounds almost too good to be true. This is reality at the Percival Restaurant on the campus of South Puget Sound Community College.

And that steak — served last week with garlic green beans and Yukon gold potatoes — was $10.

“Nobody knows about us,” chef/professor Scott McClean told The Olympian. “We’re a hidden secret.”

The Percival’s fare pairs international influences with locally sourced ingredients and ranges from fine-dining fare to such midday staples as burgers and fish tacos. And it’s prepared by SPSCC’s culinary students.

“We’re a little bit upper end,” said McLean, who came to the college in 2016 after serving as executive chef at Walla Walla‘s Marcus Whitman Hotel. “We teach dinner at lunch, so the food is elevated.”

The culinary students also work with such expensive ingredients as lobster and wagyu beef at quarterly wine dinners and other elegant events.

And they, along with students in the college’s catering program, were recognized for making the best-tasting and best-presented dish at the 2019 Masquerade Ball fundraiser for the Washington State Combined Fund Drive.

The winning dish was bulgogi beef with Asian coleslaw served in a wonton taco shell. The students also recently prepared Moroccan food for a retirement dinner.

McLean and fellow professor Emily Wallace aim to teach students about all aspects of working in a restaurant as well as preparing dishes from many different cultures.

“We don’t want the students getting bored,” McLean said. “They’re making stuff that they’ve never done before.”

The restaurant’s menu includes vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options too.

Sometimes, there are desserts available — and when they’re not on the menu, you can pop over to the cafeteria in the same building to get one. They’re made by students in the college’s baking and pastry arts program, led by Melanie Shelton, former owner of The Bearded Lady, the late-night dessert café that was beloved by downtown Olympia foodies.

“This is the future of the food scene in Olympia,” Valerie Sundby-Thorp, dean of the college’s social science and business division, said at the Feb. 14 wine dinner at the Percival.

For those in the know, it’s the present of the food scene, too.

Percival Restaurant

• What: South Puget Sound Community College’s culinary students sharpen their skills, working with a wide variety of local foods in this lunch-only eatery.
• When: 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays during regularly scheduled class days in fall, winter and spring. The last open day for winter quarter is March 18, and the restaurant reopens for spring quarter April 15.
• Where: Percival Restaurant, Student Union (Building 27), South Puget Sound Community College, 2011 Mottman Road SW, Olympia
• More information: 360-596-5404, spscc.edu/campus-life/cafe
• Also: The restaurant takes reservations for large groups and also hosts meetings, private events and quarterly wine dinners that are fundraisers for the SPSCC Foundation.