Payton Lark ’27

The new dining room in the main building, room 191.

Teacher and chef Nickolas Lopez is adding a dining room to his collection of classrooms. The room is located in room 191, Shannon Singer’s old English classroom. Having a dining room accessible creates many new possibilities. It will be used as a lunch room for staff, a classroom for an array of classes such as global foods and foods and pastries, along with a place for the staff to learn and grow.

The dining room will be open on Wednesdays for multiple activities, especially for its use as a classroom for the foods classes. The classroom is set up like a real dining room with booths and chairs to bring the restaurant to life.

“It can be a multi-purpose room,” Lopez said. “We can use it for academic purposes, or hands-on learning as well.”

Lopez said this is also a fun new experience for his students. Being able to always be in a kitchen or a dining room, students are able to be fully immersed in the class and get to experience working in a restaurant, learning valuable everyday life skills. Experiences for the students will include everything from cooking and plating a meal to washing the dishes after the meal is complete.

“I like the mix of booths and chairs,” South student Maggie Houk ‘27 said. “because it makes you feel like you’re in a real restaurant, especially with the alleyway down the middle.”

There is a new chef as well, Chef Tory. She will be the head of this operation, so Lopez can continue to teach his classes and be able to have help with this exciting project.

“Chef Tory helps with explaining.” Vivian Jacobs ‘28 said. “She just walks around just genuinely helping out with the class.”

This is not only a new learning opportunity for students but also for Lopez. He is learning how to use his new room to its best ability and help others learn and grow as staff and students. Lopez is working hard to make a new exciting experience for South.

“I think it’s a really good extra element that we can bring into the program that we couldn’t have prior to this,” Lopez said. “We could do a lot of instructional-based work, but as far as commercial production we couldn’t do. So this is going to give us another element of exposure that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”