Chad Houser
Chef Houser started Café Momentum, a Dallas-based restaurant and culinary training facility, that transforms young people’s lives by providing a positive environment in which at-risk youth who have spent time in juvenile facilities receive intensive mentoring, culinary, job and life-skill training enabling them to achieve their full potential. After 17 years as a chef, Chad sold his partnership of Parigi Restaurant to devote his full attention to Café Momentum in 2012. He took a single opportunity of interacting with at-risk youth and juvenile offenders through an ice cream making contest at the Dallas Farmers Market and decided he want to elicit the same sense of pride he saw in those young boys on an ongoing basis. In the community, Chad has previously served as President of the board of directors for Dallas Farmers Market Friends and as Vice Chair of the El Centro Exes Association (Houser received his culinary training at El Centro) where he is also a member of the El Centro College Food and Hospitality Institute “Hall of Fame.”