Chef raises bar for senior center food

WASILLA — That contented sigh that follows a satisfying meal has become an everyday habit for diners at Wasilla Area Seniors Inc.

With lunch fare that rivals the best at many fine restaurants, Wasilla’s seniors and shut-ins aren’t treated to stereotypical cafeteria food. Maybe that’s because their chef brings some serious culinary chops to the kitchen at the senior center.

Chef Clay Randolph has been cooking for the seniors for about 18 months, and it’s because of meals like Wednesday’s that keep the center’s dining room full. In addition to soup and salad every day, a variety of traditional and fusion dishes keep the menu lively, Randolph said.

On this day, they were treated to baked pollack with a dill cream sauce, roasted rosemary potatoes, baby carrots “and what I call the ‘refrigerator soup,’” the chef said. “That’s all the leftovers of the vegetables and meats done as a southwestern-style soup.”

While Wasilla seniors have enjoyed their introduction to Randolph’s cooking, his food may be familiar to the general public as well. Born and raised in Palmer, Randolph trained under Chef John Spencer at the culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. From there, he opened a restaurant at a hotel and resort in North Carolina before moving back to the Valley. Here, he cooked at the Alpine Bar and Grill, Frontier Steakhouse at the Mat-Su Resort and at Setter’s Bay Resort.

“Cooking as always been a very fulfilling thing for me,” Randolph said. “The best part is when you feed somebody and you walk out in that dining room and they say, ‘This is one of the best things I’ve ever had.’ You can tell as soon as they’re eating by the look on their faces how their feeling about the food. It’s very gratifying. My line of work is all about feeding hungry people.”

Since starting at the senior center, Randolph said he’s had to learn quickly that cooking for seniors under state-mandated nutritional guidelines is very different from a busy restaurant kitchen.

And the faces of those he cooked for weren’t always positive reflections of his food — and seniors can be brutally honest food critics.

“When I first started here, it was kind of different, because I was trying to throw out beautiful different things and trying to get the seniors to try different things,” he said. “I found I have to ease that kind of thing in, because this is a very meat-and-potatoes generation.”

He recalls one dish “that really bombed.”

“I’ll tell you exactly the one,” Randolph said. “This dish was huge in my restaurants, so I thought it would be here, too. I did a Thai peanut chicken chef’s salad. It was beautiful, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. They said, ‘We don’t want any of that foreign food, make us American food.’”

Ironically, it’s one of Randolph’s Caribbean-influenced dishes that has become extremely popular.

“That’s my Caribbean jerk ribs,” he said. “They’re really good, so there’s that, and then the chicken Alfredo. I have to make that with fat-free milk and fat-free cream cheese. It’s not what you would expect, but every single one of them says it’s the best Alfredo they’ve ever eaten — and they have no idea what’s really in it (they think it’s all that fatty good stuff).”

Randolph said he’s learned a lot about cooking and his profession since starting at WASI. Rule No. 1, he said, “is you better have a soup every single day.”

For him, every soup, entrée, side dish and dessert is made from scratch, and they must live up to a high standard. Many of the senior residents and diners are also good cooks, having honed their skills through decades in front of a stove and oven.

“I get cooking tips quite often,” he said. “I actually flip that on them by inviting them into the kitchen twice a month the first Tuesday and the last Tuesday for cooking lessons.”

One of Randolph’s fans is Gene Chapados, a resident at the senior center who said the food since the chef has come aboard has improved remarkably.

“I live down in the housing, and before he came it was kind of, well, you took your chances and hoped it was good,” she said. “How, we have a menu like we’ve never had before. People look forward to the food, they really, really do.”

Wednesday’s main dish was a good example, Chapados said.

“We had pollack today and it was so good,” she said. “I head here every day and I start coming around about 10 a.m. and ask him what the soup’s going to be.”