How OKC culinary students stepped up to create a Thanksgiving dinner with the Homeless Alliance

Chef and culinary instructor Anna Banda didn't imagine that her classroom would one day become a place where students would bare their souls while giving back — sometimes to an organization they'd been helped by themselves.

"They tell you their stories and it's heartbreaking because some of them were really young when they go to the Homeless Alliance to take advantage of the things that they offer there,” she said.  “In my mind it’s a perfect partnership because I feel like without the Homeless Alliance, those students wouldn’t have been able to come through our program because they were struggling."

The partnership Banda is talking about is the carefully choreographed dance of preparing enough perfectly cooked turkeys to feed crowds of hundreds, something Francis Tuttle's Culinary Arts program has been doing sustainably and reliably for the better part of a decade as part of Clayton Bahr's Turkey Tango.

If you've ever planned and prepped Thanksgiving dinner, you know the task can be daunting, and crafting a well-cooked turkey is perhaps the hardest feat of the entire meal.

How the Turkey Tango has evolved to beyond just a perfectly cooked turkey

The event — now named for Bahr, one of the men who started it (along with Claude Rappaport, at Culinary Kitchen) in the late aughts — began as a way to help City Rescue Mission improve the quality of the turkeys being served to those experiencing homelessness.

"If you've ever had thawed out turkey, it is not the best tasting thing in the world," Bahr said. "Why do they (those experiencing homelessness) have to eat s*** food on Thanksgiving? Why even go to the trouble?"

The technology of the ovens at Culinary Kitchen allowed the men to cook a turkey perfectly in just 45 minutes, taking the task from requiring weeks of cooking and refreezing in advance to preparation in just 24 hours leading up to the Thanksgiving meal instead.

Throughout the years, the event morphed and grew with local restaurant groups coming on board to provide side dishes to accompany the birds.

Eventually, former Oklahoman Food Editor Dave Cathey also joined Bahr to help with the event. When the Culinary Kitchen closed and Rappaport retired, a need for a new method to prepare the turkeys arose. Cathey's son, Luke, then a student in Francis Tuttle's Culinary Arts program, suggested the school's kitchens.

More: An Oklahoma city now requires a permit to feed homeless. Advocates say they're being 'punished'

Instructor Anna Banda met with Cathey and Bahr, and a new partnership emerged. That collaboration not only provided ample space for the growth of the Turkey Tango, but also reduced prep time even further.

"We can put 25 turkeys in the rotating ovens, and we have four of those, so we can do 100 turkeys easily, and then we use, like, three of the Rationals that we have inside the classrooms, so I mean it takes like maybe five hours tops to cook all of them,” Banda said.

Even with all of that preparation, as a culinary instructor Banda was not totally sure of what would happen when she agreed to take on the role of turkey maestro.

The ultimate volunteer opportunity for culinary students

Turkey Tango falls at a time of the year when students (who range in age from high schoolers to adults) are typically dismissed from classes and instructors are only on campus for professional development.

“It’s always been on a volunteer basis,” Banda said. “The first year that we did it, I was nervous that students weren’t going to volunteer because that was a year that students didn’t have to come to Francis Tuttle, all students were out the whole week. But, there was a lot of students.”

Every year since, students have continued to show up, Banda said. Whether there are five or 25, she said watching the students give their time shows that the values she is instilling during her short time instructing reach beyond the kitchen.

“First and foremost, chefs are servants. They’re like anything else, we're not here making food for ourselves, we're here making food and training our students to make food for others to make others have that happy warm feeling inside,” Banda said. “It's a gift to be able to cook. It's a gift then to give back to the community.”

These days, the turkeys typically feed what is probably close to a thousand people, several hundred at Oklahoma City's Homeless Alliance and another few hundred in Norman. People Bahr recognizes as being worthy of the same kind of effort, care and love as the rest of us.

"Just because someone is having a rough time of it doesn't mean they don't deserve everything everyone else has," he said.

More: Why do Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving? See how the bird is connected to the holiday

What's more, the event that began as a way to volunteer 15 years ago for Bahr — who was told in April 2022 that lung cancer had returned, this time terminal — now provides a legacy and reminder of his mark on the city.

"My kids were always a part of this, and that was always our Thanksgiving tradition," Bahr said. "That will always be there for them to interact with however they choose, so that's a big deal for me."

Banda said she is thankful to Bahr and Cathey for entrusting her and her students with the job of feeding Oklahomans in need for Thanksgiving all those years ago. In the time since the Turkey Tango first came to the technology center, she said the men have stepped back their roles, putting full faith in her students' abilities and allowing them to shine. For Banda, the hope is that the annual Tango is just the beginning of many dances she gets to watch for many culinary classes to come.

“I’m not the star of the show here. They really are the stars, and we have some incredibly talented students here,” Banda said. “If one of the years they don’t show up, the next year they don’t show up, that might be something that then we pass on to somebody else. I hope that never happens.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Francis Tuttle partners with Homeless Alliance for Turkey Tango in OKC