GCCTC hosts another successful Christmas buffet
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Student Nikolas Strait stirs a pot of sauce Friday morning before the school’s annual Christmas buffet.
The aroma inside the Greene County Career and Technology Center last Friday was enough to make anyone’s stomach growl.
The school’s cooking and hospitality students hosted another successful Christmas lunch buffet that had lines out the doors of the facility.
Dan Wagner, the director of the culinary arts program at the GCCTC, along with guest chefs, Oliver Beckert the executive chef at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and Jeff Cecil, a chef with Sullivan University, spent Thursday and Friday morning with the students in the kitchen preparing food for the buffet.
“Great job,” Beckert said to the students Friday. “It went smoother than last year.”
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Executive chef Oliver Beckert from Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., checks one of the dishes Friday morning, before the Greene County Career and Technology Center’s annual Christmas buffet.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
A caprese salad was one of many dishes on the annual Christmas buffet that ran the full length of a hallway at the Greene County Career and Technology Center.
The crew struggled to find enough places on the lengthy buffet table for all of the different food options. Hungry customers also had a difficult time finding enough room on their plates for everything as well.
School superintendents and teachers from across the county, politicians and community leaders, members of the Greene County Chamber of Commerce and police officers, along with anyone with an appetite for gourmet food and good company, swarmed the building.
Students kept refilling serving bowls of food, making sure the buffet remained stocked to satisfy the lines of people waiting to dig in.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Guests at the Greene County Career and Technology Center’s annual Christmas buffet made sure to save room for dessert Friday.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Greene County residents lined up quickly Friday to fill their plates at the Greene County Career and Technology Center’s annual Christmas buffet.
Wagner said putting on the event takes the whole school’s participation. In order to make sure everyone had a place to sit and enjoy the meal, the school opened up rooms in other departments, like cosmetology and healthcare.
Stacey Wheaton, a teacher in the health assistant program, and her 36 students decorated their room with a giant snowman on the ceiling. She said that since Pathways of Southwestern Pennsylvania brings some of their clients to the buffet, some of which use reclining wheelchairs, they wanted to put some of the Christmas decorations on the ceiling for them to enjoy.