By Ben Yuri Biersach ’87
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.
Noguchi’s emphasis on food as narrative and cooking as metaphor elevates his lessons into a primer on life skills. “If you ask any chef what we love about cooking, most of us will tell you that it’s the way food makes you feel,” Noguchi says. “The way our students feel about themselves and the world they live in has a much stronger impact on how they are going to act as adults than how high their GPA was, or what AP course they took, or what Ivy League college they went to.”
The class is structured around learning about staple starches, such as kalo, rice and noodles. Noguchi explains why this approach proves universally relatable: “Whether you’re rich or poor, we all gotta eat starches.”
Throughout the semester, he requires every student to cook each starch at home with a family member of an older generation, and then have a conversation about the cuisine while eating the meal. This gives students insight into the impact food had on the life experiences of their own parents and grandparents.
Rella Binney ’24, who took the class as a senior in the fall of 2023, learned about her family’s connection to food over a bowl of noodles. “When I cooked with my dad, we made saimin,” she explains. “It’s a pretty simple dish, and we just ate dinner and spoke to each other. I learned about his relationship with his grandparents. It can change your perspective when you learn about their lives, because then you see how their stories changed them, and how your stories are changing you.”
Exploring perspectives is further exercised through an on-campus mentorship program that creates connections with Punahou staff members. Food is cooked, conversations ensue, and the students gain an appreciation for the people who play less-visible roles in the school community. To Noguchi, these linkages are critical. “We want our students to get to know the people on campus who they don’t interact with on a regular basis.”
“It’s a pretty simple dish, and we just ate dinner and spoke to each other. I learned about his relationship with his grandparents. It can change your perspective when you learn about their lives, because then you see how their stories changed them, and how your stories are changing you.”
– Rella Binney ’24
There’s also a seriously practical side to the curriculum: after all, Cook Your Heritage’s students are learning from one of Hawai‘i’s most passionate chefs. By the end of the semester, Noguchi isn’t expecting his charges to be ready to work in a restaurant, but he wants them to know their way around the kitchen, hopefully in service to the community. “If you can show your students how much work it takes to cook for 30 people,” he says, “you’re going to shift kuana‘ike.”
Thanks to the class, Binney herself developed fresh confidence in her cooking skills, which she acknowledges will serve her well while attending college in Texas. “Gooch taught me that I can be comfortable in the kitchen. I can cook my own food, and I can make food that I normally don’t like into something I do. When I was younger I wasn’t open to trying things and I just wasn’t huge on cooking, but after taking the class I have really changed my perspective.”
With Noguchi’s mandate that his students explore how food makes them feel, it’s no surprise he finds a shift in his own kuana‘ike as he teaches the class. “I learn so much from my students. You realize that it changes your perspective on life. I feel like sometimes working through these experiences and listening to the experiences of my students, it’s almost like therapy.” He laughs. “I love our class!”