It was clear from the interview that Kevin Palacios wasn’t applying for a typical restaurant job.
The first sign came from a scenario, the only culinary-related question all afternoon: imagine the burgers are burning. A chain of tickets hangs from a whirring printer. Pots clang, an oven door is slammed, a plate is spilled and someone starts to cry. Your phone begins to buzz as a line snakes out the door. An argument breaks out. Then someone lunges at you with a knife. What do you do?
“Somehow, I answered it,” Palacios said from his office at The Village Cookie Shoppe in Long Beach.
In a normal kitchen, arguments happen. As do accidents, burnt burgers and crying. But this isn’t a normal kitchen.
Since 2015, Palacios has led the kitchen and bakery run by Mental Health America of Los Angeles’ (MHALA) employment program.
The longstanding program, one of three the nonprofit offers, teaches people the skills needed to land a job in a commercial kitchen or cafe.
His staff, the budding cooks and bakers — six to eight per ‘semester’ — are the formerly jobless, homeless, incarcerated or fostered, who must arrive on time and diligently do their unheroic jobs as part of their slow crawl back into societal standing.