A chicken sandwich is just a chicken sandwich, right?
Try telling that to chef Robert Cabreros and his crew at Aromas Cafe on the Yuba College Clear Lake campus. Their barbecue chicken sandwich outsells all other menu items by a three-to-one margin. It is so popular the stock they set aside for lunch rush often sells out before crowds dwindle.
“It takes business away from the rest of the menu,” said Jorge Vega, a student at Yuba’s culinary school and cook at the Saw Shop in Kelseyville.
Oh, it’s still just a chicken sandwich in the end — seared meat, sauce and accoutrements on a ciabatta bun. But Cabreros and his students start with whole free range bird sourced from a farm in Petaluma. The students bone the chicken before resting it in brine overnight.
“The foundation for the sandwich is the best,” Cabreros observed. “We start with the best chicken we can purchase.”
Americans long ago learned to settle for mass produced parts, bulging with utterly bland white meat poundage, injected with dubious solution to increase moistness. While every European bistro served meat showing the rustic, gamey savor of natural bird, we ended up with McNuggets and boneless “wings.”
The free range chicken used by Aromas is not only distinct in its rearing, but also air frozen. It contains no extra water, hence the brining.
Ask any southern grandmother: A thorough soak in homemade brine is the secret to tender, moist bird.
To this the culinary students at Aroma dollop on a house made barbecue sauce, tending toward Kansas City style without foregoing some of the other regional traditions. It is sweet more than tangy, yet rears up to bare just enough heat.
Despite the popularity of this sandwich — and the necessity to teach it over and over — Cabreros views the item from an instructor’s perspective.
“It has so many teaching techniques,” he said. Students at Yuba’s culinary school learn of quality product, knife techniques, care in preparation, patience, dexterity on the grill with a meat that often turns temperamental. Pull chicken from the heat too soon and there’s a danger; too late and it transforms into pale leather. And, Cabreros explained, “the success of the restaurant is secondary to their education.”
Students assigned to Aromas’ kitchen duty also turn out pizza, sandwiches and diner basics. The menu for the spring semester adds a couple of twists, as well: barbecued short ribs with a side of house made kimchi, for instance, or saiman — Hawaiian ramen — draped in an indescribably expressive broth.
Katrina Carrillo studies pastry and baking, something that sets her apart from the others. Chefs, after all, treat the more precise practice behind dough as something of a mad science.
“The set recipes are difficult,” Carrillo said. “You mess up one thing, you mess up the whole thing.”
Aroma reopens for spring term next week, so a little patience is necessary. Meanwhile Cabreros and his class are readying for another run on their barbecue chicken — and perhaps secretly hoping the new menu items might challenge the sandwich in popularity.
Or they may just be happy, no matter what. As student Richard Phillips noted, “to see the public eat your food — it puts a smile on your face.”
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
