After spending years working in the kitchens of restaurants throughout California, Michael Handy of Hanford uses an old adage to describe how he came to teach aspiring chefs.

“I can give you a fish and you can eat for a day. or I can teach you how to fish and you can eat for a lifetime,” he said.

He’s been teaching students at the Institute of Technology in Clovis since 2008 and hasn’t looked back since.

“It’s a lot of fun but I never thought I’d end up teaching.” he said.

Handy grew up in Michigan but moved to California in 1996 to pursue his own culinary dreams.

“At that point there were one or two spots where you could go to really have a career and go where the movers and shakers were,” he said. “That was San Francisco or New York.”

He studied at City College of San Francisco and graduated with his associate’s degree in culinary arts in 1998. Handy also met his wife of nine years, Brenda, in the school’s classrooms.

After graduation he went on to work in the kitchens of several of San Francisco restaurants, including Viognier, where he worked with the critically-acclaimed chef Gary Danko.

He and his wife moved to Santa Rosa where they lived for a few years until 2001 when they purchased the Visalia bed and breakfast inn, the Ben Maddox House.

Handy cooked gourmet breakfasts and specialty dishes for catering events from the bed and breakfast for five years until 2006 when they sold it and moved to Hanford.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “I got to try things I’ve never really done before. Every Christmas we’d do Victorian teas and it was a chance for me and my wife to work together.”

He also worked as a chef for Fugazzis California Bistro in Visalia and after they sold the bed and breakfast he began working full-time as the managing chef at the restaurant’s Clovis and Fresno locations, which have since closed.

Now Handy brings his culinary experience to the classrooms of the Institute of Technology where he said teaching came naturally for him.

“When you’re a chef you do a lot of teaching in terms of training and show people different things,” he said.

Arlee Eastman of Coarsegold is enrolled in the professional chef program and has taken courses taught by Handy.

“He’s pretty helpful and he really fishes the answers out of you,” she said.

Earlier this monthSeptember Handy was named a Certified Executive Chef by the American Culinary Federation after completing several qualification requirements.

“It’s a great way to showcase the skills I’ve learned throughout my career,” he said.

He does admit that one major difference between teaching and working in a restaurant is not being able to pick who works in his kitchen.

“At school you can’t do that, but I do enjoy it because you meet a whole wide range of people,” he said. “You get to teach people who’ve never picked up a piece of broccoli in their life and then you get people who’ve been cooking with their mom or grandmother forever.”

The reporter can be reached at 583-2427.

(Sept. 29, 2009)