When he was a student in the Culinary Arts Program at what was then Maui Community College in 2009, Jonathan Pasion and his classmates would whip up bentos and innovative dishes to sell on Saturdays at the Kahului swap meet.

The profits funded their “gourmet travel club” of about 15 students who ventured to San Francisco to experience a wide array of cuisines. They sampled Burmese food and fresh seafood at the piers and dined at acclaimed chef Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse.

These college opportunities cemented Pasion’s love of cooking. He took his talents across the globe, from the ground floor of a new restaurant in New Zealand to an international cooking competition in Singapore and eventually right back home to Maui, where he now serves as executive sous chef at the luxury resort, Fairmont Kea Lani.

“My career kind of took me around the world, but the foundation of everything I’ve accomplished was pretty much built here at the college,” said Pasion, now 36. 

Pasion is among the many alumni who have gone on to big things since honing their craft in the kitchens of the University of Hawai‘i Maui College, which this year is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Culinary Program.

To mark the occasion, the college has been hosting a wine and dinner series that ends in December and is also planning its annual Noble Chef Fundraising Gala on Nov. 13.

Over five decades, the college’s culinary program has trained chefs in a changing community where high-end hotels and world-class restaurants have created an economy heavily dependent on tourism and hospitality-industry jobs.

It boasts alumni like Sheldon Simeon, the culinary mind behind Lineage in Wailea and beloved eateries Tin Roof in Kahului and Tiffany’s in Wailuku; Taylor Ponte, head chef of the new upscale Wailea restaurant Aurum; and Jeremy Choo, the senior innovation pastry chef for Hilo-founded and California-based bakery King’s Hawaiian as well as a member of the 2026 Research Chefs Association James Beard House Culinary Team.

And despite recent crises like the COVID-19 pandemic that have changed the working environment of the cooking industry for good, the college’s chefs say there’s no better time to pursue a culinary career on Maui.

“We have more people asking us for positions than we do have students to fill them,” said Gary Johnson, program coordinator and chef instructor. “I feel like the industry partners and chefs that know us and know our program, they know what the baseline student knows, what they can accomplish.”

When UH Maui chef instructor and alum Craig Omori first enrolled in the early 1990s, it was the only American Culinary Federation-accredited postsecondary program in the state. Since the college was accredited in 1992, five other community college campuses in Hawai‘i have followed. 

It’s why Omori made the decision to leave O‘ahu and come to Maui, where his dad is from. He graduated in 1994 and spent 20 years hopping between hotels, restaurants and country clubs before joining his alma mater as an instructor in 2010. Omori, who grew up as the youngest of four boys who took turns cooking for the family, sees the value in having a locally accredited program for Neighbor Island students.

“The whole idea of community college is we’re serving our community,” Omori said. “And when we say we’re serving our community, we’re not just teaching students in our community, but we’re also providing our local workforce on Maui, too.”

Johnson said it’s especially important in a place where aspiring Maui chefs have world-class opportunities “right at their front door.”

“Our local population and students have the unique ability to be able to work at some of the most fine dining restaurants that you can find,” Johnson said. “That’s really unique for a rural community.”

New culinary grads also are making more than they did when Johnson and Omori were students. In 2020, GradReports ranked UH Maui College No. 1 in the country for median starting salaries among graduates of culinary arts associate degree programs. The median salary of $37,600 for a Maui grad — though still a challenge on an island with such a high cost of living — was even higher than the $31,200 starting salary for alumni of the Culinary Institute of America, one of the premier culinary schools in the country.

Johnson and Omori said the industry has seen many changes over the past few years, especially after the pandemic when eating at a sitdown restaurant was no longer an option. 

The loss of jobs and stress of the pandemic took a heavy toll on the industry. Burned-out employees quit in droves. The mindset shifted from the notorious “nightmare-style chef” tyrannizing the kitchen to an effort to treat employees better and improve working conditions, Johnson said. 

“The pandemic was a sea change in lots of different ways for how the entire hospitality industry was viewed,” Johnson said. 

Omori remembers the struggle of social distancing and virtual learning in such a hands-on program. They taped squares for students to stand in and arrows pointing in the direction that students could go inside the kitchen. 

“Everything was twice as difficult,” Omori said. “But we got through it and we had some really strong students actually come out of that time.”

The 2023 wildfires in Lahaina and Kula also impacted culinary jobs locally. Many restaurants and businesses were lost to the flames, and the dip in tourism hit Maui’s economy hard. The industry has yet to fully recover. 

Omori and Johnson are proud of how their students, staff and volunteers stepped up to help feed the community after the fires. The culinary team launched an on-campus food hub, preparing 10,000 meals within days of the disaster and creating “the blueprint for any other disaster in any kind of community like ours,” Omori said.

“That’s the spirit that we bring to everything we do in the program, always helping out where we can … and trying to set the example,” Johnson added.

The college’s instructors don’t just want to train good chefs, they want to make good people and especially enjoy seeing homegrown talent succeed.

Pasion is one of those local success stories. He was born and raised in Pā‘ia in a big Filipino family where he learned that homecooked meals like his mom’s adobo were among the simplest ways to spark joy.

“I love the idea that I could create something with my hands and that would make someone else happy,” he said.

As a sophomore walking through the halls of Maui High School, Pasion would often catch the aroma of freshly baked cookies wafting out of Ms. Kong’s home ec classroom. He joined the class, and soon he was participating in local and off-island cooking competitions. Chefs at Maui Community College started mentoring him, and after graduating from Maui High in 2008, he enrolled in the college’s culinary program. 

While there, Pasion received the Tylun Pang scholarship, named for the late celebrated chef who served as the longtime executive chef at the Fairmont Kea Lani and would later become his mentor. The scholarship allowed him to work for six months at a local hotel, where he got into “a real kitchen” and learned the industry ropes.

Chef instructors like Bobby Santos and Kyle Kawakami, the owner of the popular food truck Maui Fresh Streatery, pushed Pasion out of his comfort zone and “saw potential in me that I may not have fully recognized in myself at that time.” Santos urged him to get off the island and see the world, so Pasion did. 

He graduated with his associate degree from Maui college in 2010, then studied at Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island. He also worked in South Carolina before coming back to Maui to work as the chef de cuisine at the Andaz Maui Wailea Resort’s signature restaurant in 2014. 

In 2019, a former Andaz colleague convinced him to travel to New Zealand to help develop the Park Hyatt Hotel’s signature restaurant from the ground up. 

That same year, Pasion also brushed off his high school competition skills, jumping into the Hyatt’s “The Good Taste Series” with more than 220 chefs from Hyatt hotels and resorts in over 40 countries. He made it all the way to the global finals in Singapore, where he beat out five of the Hyatt’s best international culinary talents with two dishes inspired by his culture — beef cheek adobo and kilawin, a raw fish dish. Putting new spins on the things he loves are part of Pasion’s cooking philosophy.

“For me, it’s about finding the balance between tradition and innovation,” he said. “I want my food to feel familiar enough to bring back memories but exciting enough to create new ones.”

Pasion’s dedication to his roots was something Pang had “always engraved into my head … is give back to where you came from, and remember where you came from.”

Now Pasion is doing just that, volunteering at Maui High and helping mentor students as part of the Young Professionals High School Mentor Program.  

“I believe success isn’t just about the awards you win or the positions you hold, but pretty much about the people you inspire and the opportunities you can create for others,” Pasion said.

Kiana Academia and Stepanie Leano are part of the next generation of Maui culinary alumni. The 2023 Baldwin High School graduates and inseparable friends are in their last year of the program and are looking forward to finding jobs on island. 

Academia, who loves to bake cookies for friends and decided to turn her side passion into a career, said she was pleasantly surprised to find that the culinary world wasn’t the terrifying vision she had from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s show “Hell’s Kitchen.”

The most valuable lesson is learning about all the work that goes on behind the scenes — sourcing ingredients, budgeting costs — to put a dish on the table. She hopes to work in a smaller restaurant so she can interact more with customers. She loves to get to know people and what they like to eat. 

“Cooking for someone, it’s like an intimate kind of thing,” she said.

Leano, who followed her brother into the program, said she was skeptical cooking could become her career. But she’s embraced her time in the program, where she’s learned the value of “being connected to what you’re cooking.” She listened to her instructors share the backstories of their dishes and enjoys putting her own twists on the Filipino comfort foods she grew up watching her grandma make with ingredients from their own farm.

She describes cooking as her “love language” and is considering a job in a hotel in South or West Maui where she can build experience.

Earlier this year, Leano and Academia embarked on a trip with other students to South Korea and Japan, where they visited open markets and a local cooking school, sampled delicacies that included live octopus tentacles, and learned how chefs from other countries elevate their own traditional dishes. 

Academia said having a culinary program on Maui is a unique opportunity on a small island, especially for people who might be afraid to step into “the chef life.” She’s glad she gave it a chance. Between the alumni who offer students opportunities in their restaurants and the instructors willing to help them source tough ingredients for a dish, Academia says she feels like “you’re going to have someone always backing you up in the program.”

“It’s really open to helping its students be the best chefs that they can be,” Academia said. “The instructors and chefs, they’re very encouraging.”