SOUTH PORTLAND – The lunch service program at Southern Maine Community College, which has been offered from the college’s Culinary Arts Dining Room since 1972, is on the verge of expansion.

Beginning Nov. 3, the school’s culinary arts students will offer dinner service to the general public.

The dinners, like the lunch program, will take place Wednesday through Friday through Dec. 16 and cost $12. Seating will begin at 6:30 p.m. The meals will resume in January.

The idea of the dinner – to teach the students the ins and outs of food service – is the same as the lunch offering.

“We’ll make the educational experience the same,” said Wilfred Beriau, the 2008 Chef Educator of the Year who has been working at SMCC for more than 25 years. “Different people will come out to dinner than the lunch so we might have a slight change in demographics, but otherwise the dinners will be the same [as the lunches].”

Beriau said the lunches have had a steady clientele since it began 38 years ago.

“We’ve been having some people come very Wednesday since 1972,” he said.

Often times, he added, nursing homes will bring busloads of their residents to the school for lunch.

Beriau said the menus, which follow a theme every week, include the cuisine of France, the United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia.

“The menus are not designed with the guests in mind,” he said. “The menu is designed around giving the maximum working experience to each and every student.”

Expanding to dinner service is an idea that had been kicked around the department before.

“We had always talked about eventually expanding the program,” said Tony Poulin, chairman of the Culinary Arts Department. “With the enrollment increase, we are finding that when doing the lunch service, the classes were overflowing and students were either falling over each other or didn’t have anything to do.”

Poulin said the department looked at the numbers and decided an evening session of the class to introduce students to dinner service seemed like the best option.

The program has 230 students, Beriau said, a 38 percent increase from three years ago. Poulin said interest in the program has soared in recent years, in part due to the economy. More people are out of work and going back to school, he said, and the popular reality shows on the Food Network are introducing more people to culinary arts. The average age of a student in the department, Beriau said, is 27.

Adding dinner service, Poulin said, will allow more of the department’s students the opportunity to be educated through hands-on learning.

The dining room overlooking Casco Bay, which Beriau said “has the best view in Southern Maine,” can seat about 90 people.

Poulin said each lunch or dinner serving involves approximately 30 students from the advanced baking, advanced food preparation and dining room service classes.

For dinner service, he said, the first-year students will come in from 3 to 6 p.m. to do food preparation work, and the second-year students will come in at 6 p.m. to pick up where the first year students left off. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the second-year students will prepare and serve the dinner guests before cleaning up for the night by 8:45.

While students get a full immersion into culinary arts, both Beriau and Poulin stressed the program is about much more than honing the students’ culinary skills.

Beriau said students take math courses, and courses on nutrition, business management, psychology, English and literature, as well as their culinary classes, which include everything from basic food preparation and baking to food and beverage purchasing to advanced cooking specialties and food service management.

“We believe in the total experience,” he said. “If you want to be a chef, you must be worldly, sophisticated.”

Elizabeth Arsenault, the academic coordinator for the department and a 2000 graduate of the program, said the benefit of the program is its thoroughness, preparing students for a career in the food service industry.

The students also have an opportunity to apply their skills outside of the kitchen. Arsenault said last year students from SMCC fielded their first team in the American Culinary Federation’s Baron Galand Knowledge Bowl.

Since the program began in the 1960s, countless graduates have gone on to work in restaurants all over the country, as well as in local restaurants, such as David’s 388 and Joe’s Boathouse in South Portland and Fore Street, DiMillo’s and Hugo’s in Portland.

“We can’t go out anywhere in Portland and not see one of our current or former students,” Poulin said.

While some students opt for employment right after graduating from SMCC, others, Poulin said, choose to specialize their culinary skills by transferring to a four-year culinary school. SMCC has transfer agreements with Johnson and Wales, Paul Smith College and New England Culinary Institute, and is working on an agreement with Southern New Hampshire University.

One local restaurant owner sees the expansion as a positive for the school and not as a source of extra competition between the restaurants in the Spring Point area of the city.

“I personally would not be concerned. They do a good program over there. It is a different clientele than we have,” said Joe’s Boathouse chef and co-owner Nathanial Chalaby, adding the restaurant has employed many graduates of SMCC’s culinary school over the years.

Other restaurant owners are not so sure.

“We are very supportive of SMCC and Chef Beriau. Over the years we have hired many of their students and graduates,” said Mark Loring, owner of the Saltwater Grille. “However, I feel it is a conflict of interest for the public sector to compete with the private sector as SMCC is subsidized by state tax dollars.”

Wilfred Beriau, right, professor and chairman of the Culinary Arts Department at Southern Maine Community College, inspects some of the desserts prepared Friday by students Keith Morrison and Davan LeMar. The program, which has been offering public lunches since 1972, will now expand to a dinner service starting Oct. 26. (Photo by Rich Obrey)Diners at the SMCC lunches, such as the school’s director of student life, Tiffanie Bentley, enjoy their meals with a panoramic view of the Casco Bay ship channel. (Photo by Rich Obrey)