Fellows mentioned in this story: Mark Noguchi

From Punahou Bulletin:

Who’s been hungry before?” esteemed local chef and Punahou teacher Mark “Gooch” Noguchi ’93 asks aloud in his Cook Your Heritage senior capstone class. With most students in the room recalling the last time they couldn’t make it to the snack bar before it closed, he goes deeper. “Have you ever been so hungry that it hurts?”

Noguchi’s line of questioning is hard-earned: as a younger man, he was houseless and lived out of his van for a time. A day’s meal once consisted of the leftover bed of cabbage from a friend’s chicken katsu plate. These experiences with hunger informed his subsequent career as a chef and educator. Since those challenging days, he explains, “I don’t look at food the same at all, because I know how quickly access can be taken away.”

Noguchi’s belief that “food tells a story” lays the foundation for the syllabus of Cook Your Heritage, with each student’s experience providing an opportunity to gain perspective on one’s environment, culture and family folklore. This approach to the class dovetails with one of Punahou’s seven Learning Outcomes: kuana‘ike, a reflection of how we see the world.

Continue reading at punahou.edu.