It was less of a kitchen nightmare than a kitchen full-blown acid trip. On Tuesday night, as part of Mammalian Diving Reflex's Parkdale Public School Vs. Queen West project, a dozen or so schoolkids took over the kitchens at Chef Nathan Isberg's Coca Restaurant at Trinity Bellwoods, preparing, serving and cooking five-course meals for an entire evening's worth of dinner guests.

Over a dozen children from the school's Grade 8 baking club herded on the restaurant in the afternoon, accompanied by their baking club instructor (and school science teacher) Jennifer Robinson, along with Mammalian staffer Natalie De Vito, who organised the evening.

This was the latest in a series of Mammalian events to bring PPS kids together with Queen West West artsters, beginning with Darren O'Donnell's Haircuts by Children in 2006 — which has since toured to Dublin, New York and Sydney, Australia.

Mammalian have ten themed "rounds" planned for this summer, bringing the two disparate groups together again. Lat month, as part of the Jane's Walk day, students from PPS's Grade 8 geography class took attendees on a personalised guide through the area, hitting various kiddie hangouts and playgrounds including the fabled U.G., a Parkdale video store where several of the boys spend their afternoons playing internet games.

"Teachers were coming up to me afterwards and telling me, 'I can't believe the kids took you to the U.G.!'" De Vito said. "Teachers have been trying to find the location of the U.G. for years. It's called the U.G. because it has an adult video section underground. Apparently the kids drop their basketballs down their stairs as an excuse to go down and have a peek around."

De Vito used to run one of Queen West West's first art galleries, Mercer Union. "So I'm probably one of the reasons the area's being gentrified," she said. "There's such a huge artist population in this neighbourhood, but they live in parallel with the kids. No one communicates with each other. We were interested to see how these two different groups would impact each others practices — it's as much to help us out as to help the kids. It's a symbiotic, rather than parasitic relationship. The kids are amazing — they really come up with great ideas."

The baking club students had been training for weeks with Isberg (who's also the chef at Czehowski) in preparation for the evening's meals. Isberg met with the club three times, discussing what food they'd like to serve at the meal, and how to cook and present their choices. The children were also shown how to carve up a pig in the butcher's room above Czehowski. "The kids were fascinated by the pig," De Vito said. "Although I think for the vegetarians, it probably solidified their beliefs."

An afternoon spent experimenting with a carbonator, to make banana foam, resulted in the evening's desert, the "bananaccino" — a fried banana Crème brûlée served with a chocolate brownie. Because of lot of the kids come from Sri Lanka and Tibet, the menu also included a Spanish twist on momos, a Tibetan dumpling recipe.

The evening got off to fairly snappy start, with Isberg dividing the children up to prep several different courses and drinks. "I need three volunteers to get the spring rolls ready," he said, as the kids gathered in a huddle before him, "They're spring rolls with white carrots. That's what carrots were like before they were all made to look the same."

Not everything went according to plan. Isberg had to have words with a kid swishing a large knife around the kitchen like a golf club. And the soda machine, needed for the preparation of a lemon soda to accompany the first course, was broken. "We'll probably just have to do with a lemon sangria," Izberg said. "Sangria is the national drink of Spain. A lot of the time people put wine in it. We won't put wine in it this time around." ("Maybe we can sneak some alcohol in," whispered one kid at the back.)

But mostly the students handled their tasks like pros. The line of spring roll-preparers, Victor Vo, Richard Sukhu, and Miguel Pazos worked carefully and diligently for what seemed like hours in the back kitchen. And one baking clubber, Kelsey-Nicole Mackenzie, produced an excellently-rolled sushi for the battered tempura sushi starter, with only minimal help from Isberg.

"Rice is my favourite food," Kelsey told me. "I could eat it for the rest of my life. But I can't cook it. Every time I try to cook it, I burn it. I overcook it or undercook it. Oh my god. It's so nasty." (At one point, thanks to the cramped kitchen space, Mackenzie accidentally set fire to her seaweed nori while rolling the sushi. "I thought sushi was supposed to be raw," said one smart-ass kid next to her.)

If anyone in the restaurant was nervous, it was Darren O'Donnell, one of Mammalian's creative directors, who was at Coca to see how the night was going. "The school principal is here, which is pretty scary," O'Donnell told me. "I'm still frightened of school principals."

As the diners came in during the early evening, the event seemed to be progressing surely. The service was slow — one puzzled guest on his way to a show had to leave his meal early — but it wasn't Red Room slow. And everyone seemed to be working hard.

Over by the ovens, student Khalid Mahdi was preparing a three-cheese mini pizza. "The heat from the oven is killing me," he said. "This is really tiring work." Khalid seemed bothered that the school Principal, Principal Smyth, had left his main course of steamed prawn dumplings and gone outside to be interviewed by a CBC radio reporter. "He didn't even touch his food!" Khalid said, pointing aghast.

But the crowd seemed happy and humbled. At a side booth, baking instructor Jennifer Robinson looked on proudly at her students. "There's a teenage girl making sangria with a cocktail shaker behind the bar," she said. "That's so wrong."