Chef Helps Center Cook Up Culinary Dreams

On a Tuesday night at the Edna Martin Christian Center, Chef Rosie Neel shows her class how to turn an apple into a swan.  The lesson on fruit sculpture is part of a new six-week culinary training certification program at the center in the heart of the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood. 

Neel is a native New Yorker, and like so many chefs, she was influenced by a great cook in her family.

"My passion for cooking started as a young child, I was my grandmothers sous chef if you will say," explains Neel.  

She started her restaurant career washing dishes, but she was quick to throw in the towel at first opportunity.

"Chef said 'come over here,' and so I put down that pot immediately because I tell you what, I'm not a good dishwasher," Neel said. "So I went over there and he was teaching me a couple things, showing me how to prep and before long I end up becoming a cook."

After training in Germany, Neel came back to the states and worked at some top restaurants and hotels.  Love – not work – brought her to Indy, and as she was looking for a new kitchen gig, she first skipped over the job at the Edna Martin Center.

"Then I heard this little voice inside me say go back, so I went back and I threw the application out there and we kind of coversated a little bit and then when I got here and I saw all the love you know this is the real deal here," says Neel.

Tysha Hardy Sellers, executive director of the Edna Martin Christian Center, says the feeling was mutual.

"When we saw the application we said 'no way this isn't real,'" remembers Hardy Sellers. "So when we started to talk to her it was amazing the conversation that we had."  

Hardy Sellers says they quickly knew that Neal was the one to head the center’s catering kitchen and help expand its horizons, starting with the vocational training program.  

"For her to have the heart to give back to people and to teach others, it’s a wonderful opportunity for many people here," says Hardy Sellers.

Neel says the change felt right.

"I thought, you know what, that’s a win/win situation, I get to do what a love plus I get to help people," she said.

Helping people is what the Edna Martin center has been doing since 1941 in the historic Indy neighborhood that has seen its share of tough times.  Today the center works to improve quality of life for people through job training and placement, affordable health care, youth programs and senior assistance.  

Beyond the new cooking training program, the center aspires to open a restaurant in the food and beverage corridor that’s developing along 16th Street, and touches the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood. 

Neel says they already have a name.  

"The name is called the Ark, and it honors God in everything that we do," Neel said. "So, like Ruth ribs and Peter Pasta, you understand what I’m saying?"

The restaurant would provide training and employment opportunities for students in the culinary program.  And it would benefit students like Christopher Brooks who have been inspired by Neal.

"She has a wonderful work ethic and she's one of the people I really admire," said Brooks. "You know I listen to her a lot she's like a mentor to me, you know I want to be determined just like her."

Neel says she’s equally inspired by students like him.  

"Here’s the thing, these people come here because they want to be chefs, they want to be cooks," Neel said. "This industry here it's all about heart and these students have a lot of heart."  

The second free culinary training program just got started and another will begin in March.  The center plans to add four more vocational programs by the end of the year.