'Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not.'

When a friend invited me to a fundraiser at the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles for an organization called C-CAP, I expected the usual: inspiring speeches and a bland chicken-or-fish dinner.

The first course arrived: poached lobster tail on fresh corn pudding, ringed by a tart, spicy leche de tigre. Then grilled octopus beside an ethereal celery root puree with blood orange. Then lamb chops with harissa, paired with a lamb-stuffed Moroccan pastry, date puree and rosemary. Finally, a Basque cheesecake with apricot curd, whipped labneh and a honey tuile.

Every dish was cooked by a C-CAP graduate — someone who, not so long ago, had no idea this world existed.

For instance: Anthony Greco, who made that lobster. He grew up poor in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood. At Benjamin Franklin High School, his home economics teacher spotted his talent and pushed him to compete in a cooking contest in his senior year, sponsored by what was then called C-CAP. He won a scholarship that C-CAP arranged.

“I didn’t know anything,” Greco told me at the event. “I didn’t really have a family. C-CAP opened a doorway and shed light on what my trajectory can be.”

Greco apprenticed as a pastry chef at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, then worked his way through various positions. Today he is the regional executive chef at Porto’s Bakery, overseeing 225 employees at six locations.

C-CAP finds talented, underserved students in public high school culinary arts classes, trains them, connects them to mentors, and sends them to culinary college on full scholarships. It exists because of one man: Richard Grausman, who came up with the idea in the shower.

Grausman, 88, grew up in an assimilated German-Jewish family in Manhattan — his mother refused to serve bagels because they were “too Jewish.” He landed a job in the import-export business, traveling to Asia and Europe, tasting foods beyond the pot roast and brisket of his childhood.

“My palate was shocked by the flavors that I was experiencing,” he said when I called him after the event.

His boss at the time had enrolled in a cooking class but couldn’t attend, so he offered Grausman the chance. “My Jewish guilt kicked in,” he said. “I couldn’t let the tuition go to waste.”

The teacher turned out to be James Beard, the iconic American cookbook author who spurred Grausman on to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and eventually write a cookbook of his own.

As his palate broadened, Grausman saw the post-war American pantry collapse. At a food industry conference, he heard a Campbell’s Soup executive lay out the future: beautiful kitchens nobody uses, everyone microwaving meals alone, no families at the table. He left in a funk. Not long after, standing in the shower, something clicked.

“I thought, If you could do anything in the latter part of your life to change that forecast, what would it be? And immediately I said, I have to get into schools.”

Grausman founded the nonprofit C-CAP in 1990. The group reaches 25,000 students each year through culinary education, job training, mentoring and apprentice programs and career opportunities. This year, the organization awarded 144 students nationwide $3 million in scholarships to a variety of culinary schools, including trade techs and the Culinary Institute of America.

Gloria Flores came out from the kitchen at the Jonathan Club to tell the audience that she received a C-CAP scholarship to Los Angeles Trade Tech, landed her kitchen position at the Jonathan Club through the organization, and is now completing her bachelor’s degree — the first member of her family to do so.

“C-CAP didn’t just help me find my job,” she said. “They helped me find my path.”

Chefs and restaurant owners are among C-CAP’s biggest supporters — the organization creates a steady supply of trained, passionate chefs in an industry with chronic labor issues.

“When I think they went through this program in high school, and where they are now — to me, this dinner is the perfect example of the full circle impact of this organization,” said chef Susan Feniger, who along with her business partner Mary Sue Milliken was honored at the gala. “Talent is everywhere. There’s no question about that. However, opportunity is not — and C-CAP really does bridge that gap.”

Since Grausman founded C-CAP, it has distributed $79 million in scholarships. But Greco, who concocted that lobster dish, told me the mentorship opportunities were as critical as the money.

Grausman introduced him to the head chef at the Four Seasons, who has remained a lifelong influence and sounding board.

Said Lisa Fontanesi, the group’s national program director, “We are the bridge to the reality of culinary and hospitality."

C-CAP, which is now rebranding as Culinary Careers Program, was decades ahead of the current national conversation on the role vocational training can play in helping underserved communities and providing an alternative to four-year colleges. (And as I wrote in an earlier post, AI is not coming for cooking jobs anytime soon).

It’s not just about teaching oung people to make tournéed potatoes, but how to show up on time and work.

“The biggest problem I hear from the industry is the problem of attitude,” Grausman said he told students at a C-CAP scholarship breakfast. “If you have your own restaurant and the dishwasher doesn't show up, you're washing dishes. If the janitor doesn't show up, you're cleaning toilets. So if you don't know how to wash dishes or clean toilets, I want you to go home tonight and ask your mother to show you how."

I asked Grausman what it felt like to go from a simple idea to changing so many people’s lives.

He told me about Rigo Salas.

Grausman met Salas at a C-CAP cooking competition. He asked Salas how the high school senior could have no grades for the first three years of high school, then straight A’s in his final year. Salas said he’d been running with his uncle’s gang, until one summer day his uncle was shot in a drive-by and died in Salas’s arms.

Salas left the gang and found his way to C-CAP. Grausman got him into a culinary school in Philadelphia that didn’t require grades, connected him to Loews Hotels, then to the Four Seasons, where he became head breakfast chef, then he worked with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He built a strong résumé across multiple cities, before landing a job as opening chef at Yar, a new restaurant in upscale Westlake Village, near Los Angeles. Grausman helped Salas negotiate his new contract.

“Mentoring is very easy for the mentor and life-changing, oftentimes, for the mentee,” Grausman said.

A week ago, Fontanesi took a group to Yar for lunch, took photos with Salas, and texted them to Grausman. “Those were nice to get,” said Grausman. I said that sounded like great understatement.

“The fact that I was able to open a door here, open a door there, and have them go and progress in the industry has been wonderful,” he said. “You make a little comment, you make an introduction — and they sail with it."

C-CAP trains students to compete in cooking competitions in order to land scholarships to culinary schools. Alumni told me they sweated through the omelet portion. Take a look at this C-CAP video and you’ll see why you have to crack a lot of eggs before you can master this classic preparation.