Liberty High School’s Restaurant Management Team’s superior culinary knowledge won the students first place at the 2009 Boyd Coffee ProStart Invitational in Olympia Sunday.

Liberty also sent a culinary team to the competition, but that team did not place in the top three.

The four members on the restaurant team — Christine Carlson, Gabrielle McGrew, Jessica Warren and Nicole Newbury — will next compete against hundreds of student chefs at the National ProStart Invitational in San Diego April 24–26.

“They were incredible!” Liberty food and culinary teacher Zarah Matsuda said in an e-mail. “Very professional and creative in their solutions. The judges were very impressed and let them know on multiple occasions. I think they clapped for them three times.”

The team demonstrated its grasp of restaurant logistics in a knowledge bowl and a case study.

Matsuda was also pleased with her culinary team’s performance.

“They did really well,” she said. “They had great remarks from the judges. They loved everything. It was just a couple little paperwork things, some behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, that they needed to spend more time on.”

The four-member culinary team had to prepare, cook and present a three-course meal in an hour. The team’s meal was called “Take a Bite of the Northwest.”

Liberty was one of 21 Washington high schools competing in Sunday’s competition. Prizes included $400,000 in scholarships to some of the country’s top culinary schools and a trip to the nationals for the first-place finishers in the culinary and restaurant management divisions.

In the restaurant management competition, Newport High School won second and Chief Leschi High School third. In the culinary competition, Oak Harbor High School won first, Moses Lake High School second and Walla Walla High School third.

CORRECTION

The name of one of the students on Liberty’s culinary team was misspelled in the Renton Reporter. The student’s name is Maile Mittag.