TRR photo by Tom Kane Sheelah Kaye-Stepkin stands in her kitchen in Hawley. (Click for larger image)

Culinary school flavors the village

By TOM KANE

HAWLEY — A culinary school is coming to Hawley this spring.

Behind Victorian-curtained windows of the closed First National Bank of Hawley building, on the corner of Main Avenue and Keystone Street, a first-rate culinary school and restaurant is quietly being fashioned with the latest in cooking paraphernalia and haute cuisine.

But what’s singularly unique about the venture is the gustatory panache of the master teacher who’s creating the school.

Sheelah Kaye-Stepkin comes from a varied background, which includes a 20-year acting career and operating an ornamental metal business.

“I’ve loved cooking all my life,” Kaye-Stepkin said. “I sometime think I was given jobs in the theater because of my cooking ability. Everybody knew they’d eat well if I was in the cast.”

Sheelah’s acting career took her all over the country with stock touring companies and provided her with a decent living, something that not many professional actors can say.

“I got more jobs than most and not as much as others,” she said.

But after 20 years, the business got to her and she decided to quit.

“It’s tough dealing with rejections when you get a bit older,” she said.

The beauty and solitude of the Delaware River Valley spoke to her soul, and she slowly began to concentrate on cooking. That’s when she was noticed by local NBC television station in Wilkes Barre-Scranton, who asked her to do a mid-day spot demonstrating her extraordinary cooking.

“I was cooking for two wonderful women in the Milford area who used me for their entertainment affairs, and they urged me to start teaching others the things that I had learned over the years,” she said.

Her first teaching venture exceeded all her expectations.

“I put out a flier, thinking that no one would come and it got sold out, and continued to be sold out thereafter,” she said.

But why create a cooking school in Hawley?

“I saw this wonderful building and got a chance to buy it,” she said.

She and her associates have been working on preparing the building for three years.

“The opening is coming fast upon us and it’s getting very exciting,” she said.

The school, which is not an accrediting agency but just a place where people can learn how to cook for whatever reasons, will open in March.

The school will also offer dining to the public from time to time, especially in the summer season.

For more information on the school, call Kaye-Stepkin at 570/226-8200.