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Student made lunches are typically more synonymous with grilled cheese sandwiches and ramen noodles than the orange and yellow pepper soup, steak with vegetables, and pistachio cake offered by the students working Bistro 101 at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. Although PICA instructors supervised the kitchen, students prepared, cooked, and served the meals.

While the restaurant exposed students to the practical realities of the restaurant business,  Granville Island visitors sampled their efforts for at a discount price.

Gonzalo, a dark bearded Spaniard dressed in black and white checkered pants, a neatly tucked white cooking smock and pressed blue PICA apron, carefully wrote down the orders.

“It’s a lot of money, but it’s real world, very practical and we get to do everything,” Gonzalo said about his school.

He stooped to place the soup bowl on the table and recounted how he moved from Barcelona at the behest of a girl and took up cooking as a career path in Vancouver.

“It didn’t work out, but I’m happy here,” he said while nodding towards the view of False Creek and the Burrard Street Bridge ahead of him.

“This is my first day,” he said before returning with the tablespoon he had forgotten.

When pushed into the liquid, at Gonzalo’s suggestion, the flecks of chorizo sausage ringing the bowl enlivened the viscous creaminess of the orange and yellow mixture.

He grinned at the idea of opening his own restaurant on the famous Las Ramblas strip in his hometown as he served the main course. Apart from the grill marked steak, a fist-high stack of grilled vegetables and flowered row of purple mashed potatoes lined the plate’s surface. The béarnaise sauce softened the steak and dulled the bite from the fresh ground pepper covering the plate.

Desert was a miniature green pistachio cake topped by strawberry sorbet and candied pistachio that dissolved as the sorbet dripped through the cake’s crumbled surface. The combination soon collapsed into a soupy pile best scooped up with a spoon.

Coffee and the bill followed in short order.

“Thank you and come back soon,” said the white-haired maitre d’/instructor as he returned coats and hats.