Something special is always cooking in Chef Steven Fling's culinary classroom at CEC Early College. If you're anywhere near the building, you already know it. Inside, students are at their stations, moving through recipes, calling out questions and learning to trust their hands. And at the center of it is a teacher (and chef!) who knows exactly what it feels like to stand where they are. That’s because he did, in this same kitchen, decades ago.
Steven first came to CEC as an eighth grader on a shadow-day. He picked culinary and welding for his classes, and still remembers standing on the front line making eggs and omelets with his culinary teacher. That one morning changed everything! He caught the early bus from George Washington High School before 6 a.m. and enrolled into the course.
Steven later went on to culinary school in Miami, worked as a pastry chef at several Denver restaurants, and eventually got a call from his former instructors asking if he'd come back to teach. 19 years later, he's back here.
“It's a really good feeling to go full circle,” Steven said. “It allows me to connect with the students and share my journey and story through their lens.”
More than just cooking
Students in Chef Steven's class get a real look at what it takes to work in the culinary industry in the real world. Step into Chef Steven's classroom on any given day and you'll find students doing a lot of things at once: working through assignments, watching demos and prepping food for sales through the Eliot Street Cafe's service window. This real kitchen goes through the same health inspections as any other licensed restaurant in the city.
Chef Steven is deliberate about helping students see how much is happening underneath the cooking. During one class, he had students trace every moment from the time they woke up that involved math, like bus fare, timing breakfast, calculating how long to cook eggs, figuring out what time to leave the house. The list was long. “There's a lot of things in here that just aren't cooking based,” he said.
Current culinary student Gisele Velazquez, who joined the program after hearing about it from her sisters, says those cross-subject connections are real.
“We do costing, we work the cashier, we handle money,” she said. “And sanitation — I learned so much about different things that could impact people's health. The knowledge I've gained here is a lot.”
Watching students find their place
One of Chef Steven's favorite moments as a teacher came when a former student got the chance to stage at a local restaurant for an evening.
“She came back the next morning excited, passionate, full of stories from the night before,” Steven said. That student went on to culinary school and launched multiple businesses with her family. This is exactly the kind of outcome Chef Steven works toward, helping young people discover what they're capable of when someone opens the right door.
Gisele shares that the community Chef Steven has built makes the classroom feel like a place she actually wants to be.
“He's very engaging. His demos are really fun. He wants us to work as a team, and anytime we need something, he doesn't make you feel bad for asking. He just helps you,” she said, adding, “I come into this class and my mood just goes up.”
Chef Steven is clear that not every student who comes through his kitchen will go on to work in food. That's not the point.
“It's not all about cooking,” he said. “I don't expect everybody to want to be a chef or own a restaurant. But it's a real world experience. It's a life skill.”
The habits students build here, showing up on time, working hard, and being a good teammate travel with them no matter where they land.
“I hope they take away that being a good person is really an easy thing to do. Work hard to get to where you want to go. And enjoy life by finding balance with your career,” Steven said.
For Chef Steven, that's what passionate teaching looks like: meeting each student where they are, finding the best way to reach them, and making sure they leave with more than a recipe.