Reasons to Be Cheerful

Jamie Lauren makes five-star cooking look easy. With a trained hand, the chef adds two eggs and olive oil to the flour, kneads the pasta dough into a pliable ball and shows it to her eager trainees: “Touch it! You must feel it!”

Lauren is the culinary producer for the popular cooking show Top Chef, but today in the shining stainless steel kitchen on Hollywood Boulevard, she is training an unusual group of aspiring chefs: Montassar Dhaouadi, a passionate amateur cook from Tunisia; Eglal Abdelhalim, a retired diplomat for the African Union from Sudan who holds a doctorate in political science and dreams of opening her own restaurant; and Nouel HadjArab, who owned a bakery in Algeria and is a trained pâtissier.

The three trainees have come to the kitchen of the Hollywood restaurant Flavors From Afar not only to learn knife skills and make a tasty rosemary-ricotta filling for handmade ravioli, but so much more: At the end of the eight-week course, they will leave with a culinary training certificate, professional headshots, a presentable résumé, ideas for a complete menu and invaluable connections to the restaurant industry. This restaurant serves empowerment for refugees as the main dish.