Sep 26 min read

Students Learn the Ins and Outs of High-End Dining at OCC's Captain's Table

Since 1975, Captain’s Table has served as a training ground for students to gain skills, hands-on front and back-of-house experience that translates onto the plate and in the industry.

Food and beverage management student Elva running plates to tables at Captain's Table Restaurant. Photo by Cynthia Rebolledo, Culture OC

Alyssa Lobascio stands in front of a rail of tickets and begins to call out orders – two crab cakes, one crawfish bisque, two Cajun popcorn and three Creole rice salads.

Call-backs echo in unison. Burners hum. Sauces simmer. Sauté pans sizzle. Heat lamps illuminate Lobascio’s face as she puts the finishing touches on two plates of shrimp before sending them to the dining room. The first course is out.

The senior is part of the Culinary Arts program at Orange Coast College and for the night, is sous chef at the school’s 49-year-old student-run restaurant – Captain’s Table Restaurant.

Since 1975, it has served as a training ground for students to gain skills, hands-on front and back-of-house experience that translates onto the plate and in the industry.

Run by both the culinary arts and food and beverage management programs, Captain’s Table is a casual-upscale restaurant serving American regional cuisine. Reservations are booked weeks in advance — a regular occurrence – considering the prix fixe menu is a steal at $25 per person. But this Orange County restaurant didn't get there overnight.

Dan Beard, a former food service management and business professor who taught from 1975 to 2016, says the school’s food service program originally focused on providing vocational training for institutional food service – school, hospital and airline food service.

But the focus shifted in the 1960s, a time of exponential economic and demographic growth in Orange County that brought a need for restaurant and hospitality workers, and the people who might want to open an eatery.

PHOTO 1: The dining room of the original Captain’s Table restaurant packed with diners. PHOTO 2: An original Captain’s Table menu that features the two primary specials: the Admiral's Plate and the Captain's Special. Photos courtesy of OCC

“We didn’t have a restaurant at that point so the initial Captain’s Table, interestingly enough, was just a cordoned-off area of the cafeteria,” Beard says. The intent was to try to simulate a restaurant. “Students would take handwritten orders and take them back to the cafeteria kitchen, fill them and serve them to the guests.”

Meal options included two primary specials: the Admiral's Plate ($1.75 got you a large portion entree like lasagna or a chicken fried steak served with a side of vegetables and salad) and the Captain's Special ($1.25 let you choose from macaroni and cheese to meatloaf). The Crow's Nest Sandwich, a 95-cent made-to-order rotating sandwich, featured classics like a simple turkey sandwich or a luxurious Monte Cristo – Swiss cheese and ham layered between two pieces of bread battered and fried then topped with powdered sugar and served with jam.

As the program grew in popularity and student enrollment continued to increase, it became obvious there was a growing need to develop a freestanding restaurant. Beard credits his predecessor John Vincenzi, a food service management professor who taught from 1964 to 1979, for conceptualizing Captain’s Table as a stand-alone restaurant. “He did all of the heavy lifting in terms of getting the funding in place and overseeing the buildout of the Captain's Table restaurant,” Beard says.

PHOTO 1: Captain’s Table Restaurant sign hanging on the wall of the original restaurant building. PHOTO 2: Charles Eglett, a retired petty officer. got the Navy at Los Alamitos to donate this anchor. With the help of the Navy Seabees, the aviation maintenance, welding and construction students built a base for the anchor and installed it in front of the restaurant. PHOTO 3: The original Captain’s Table Restaurant first opened in 1975. Photos courtesy of OCC

In the fall of 1975, the Captain’s Table began receiving students in its new home – open to the public serving breakfast daily and lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays – and a new era in its history began.

“I was operationally responsible for running it from the start,” says Beard, now 75. “One of my students, Charles Eglett, was a retired petty officer with the Navy at Los Alamitos and got them to donate a two-ton anchor. We had the aviation maintenance, welding and construction students build a base for it – with the help of the Navy Seabees they hoisted it with a crane and brought the anchor down and the students secured it.” The anchor remained in front of Captain’s Table for 45 years until it was relocated to the quad at the campus in 2020.

The new structure was built as an adjoining building to the cafeteria with a common wall. The inside was nautical themed – port and starboard navigation lights, paintings of ships that hung on the walls – and modeled after a diner with countertop seating and stools and a dining room with tables. In 1980, the school expanded its curriculum to incorporate cooking coursework – as a result, the culinary arts program was brought into existence and first accredited in 1986.

In 1990, the culinary program continued to accelerate with Chef Bill Barber, former culinary arts program coordinator and professor, who taught until 2023.

“The structure of what we have today came from Chef Barber,” says Chef Davina Dunner, a culinary arts instructor and program coordinator. Adding that with Barber, the culinary program and Captain’s Table expanded and evolved to meet the demands of its students and the industry. Barber worked to acquire the school’s ACF accreditation (OCC is the only American Culinary Federation accredited program in Orange County – an esteemed recognition that the program meets the standard of excellence set by the ACF) and out of that came the advanced culinary certificate and associate certificate (certifications that are widely recognized in the food and restaurant industry). A new generation of chef instructors allowed for more specialized classes – OCC now has a dedicated pastry program.

“It’s always been my dream to work in the industry and get that chef title under my name,” said Joseph Dorf, 21, a senior with the Culinary Arts program, who just secured a job working at Selanne Steak Tavern in Laguna Beach as a line cook. “This program has meant everything to me – not only has it prepared me, but it’s shown me who I am as a person and what I love to cook.”

The Barber years also witnessed the restaurant's menu and operations growth with the introduction of dinner service in 2015. “That's when we really got a restaurant out of it, as opposed to just a food outlet on campus,” Dunner says.

PHOTO 1: Student Aspen Vincent ladles Béarnaise sauce for the blackened steak dish. PHOTO 2: Student Alyssa Lobascio stands in front of the rail of tickets and calls out orders. PHOTO 3: Student Matt Juliano plates the grilled trout dish. PHOTO 4: A Food and Beverage Management student sets tables for dinner service. PHOTO 5: The entrance/exterior of the new Captain’s Table restaurant in the College Center on the Orange Coast College campus. PHOTO 6: The original Captain’s Table restaurant sign displayed in case outside of the entrance of the new restaurant in the College Center. Photos by Cynthia Rebolledo, Culture OC

The updated restaurant program underscores the college's ongoing commitment to development. In 2021, the Captain’s Table got a new home in the newly constructed College Center, a four-story, 119,000 square-foot building. The sleek new restaurant is modern, yet hits an inviting note. Seating options include the restaurant’s terrace overlooking the campus or the main dining room along the glass-encased open kitchen.

Today, the Captain's Table remains a showcase for the culinary program and the students' skills – best demonstrated when it transforms into a restaurant every Thursday evening, serving a variety of cuisines from a rotating weekly menu translated through a three-course meal. This fall, dinner menus will explore different regional American cuisines each week. In the spring, international menus are featured.

“The students go from cooking in their experimental lab to actual paying customers. There’s a lot of pressure and it can be intimidating,” says culinary arts instructor Ali Flecky, who is supporting the dinner service class in the kitchen and stepping in when needed.

If the students were nervous on the Thursday I visited last spring, they didn’t show it. Lobascio and her classmates handled the Cajun/Creole menu effortlessly. Dishes like the fried mushroom Po’ Boy (meaty cremini mushrooms fried and dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickled onion and sherry sauce, and served on a French roll) and crawfish bisque (a complex, long, slow-simmering dish of creamy shellfish soup finished with chives) – spoke to the culinary traditions of the South with a unique balance of creativity and technique.

“I would stack up any of those dishes,” says Beard, “that come out of that kitchen with any high-end restaurant.”

Captain's Table

WHERE: Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. The restaurant is located on the second floor of the College Center building. Parking is available off Fairview and Pirate Way in Lot A. See the campus map for details.

HOURS: Fall dinner seating time is 6 p.m. on Thursdays; lunch buffet service starts the 8th week of the semester and is held weekly on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m.

COST: $25 per person for dinner.

CONTACT: Reservations are open now and can be found on OpenTable using the Captain’s Table website. Email at captainstable@cccd.edu