From the dining room, windows showcase sweeping views of rolling golden hills in the distance. In the creases of a famous valley, a train occasionally rolls past grazing cattle in the warm sun. Dishes like burrata with grilled peaches are studded with hyper-local produce, some of which comes from a farm a mere 10 yards away, while a sloping vineyard nearby produces wines that are available by the glass and the bottle.

Is this a posh resort? A Los Angeles shrine to seasonality? No, not even close. Welcome to Cal Poly Pomona, the casual commuter school tucked at the edge of Los Angeles County and the broader Inland Empire.

The Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch, located in what looks like a typical classroom building on the Cal Poly campus, holds the distinction of being the first student-run, hands-on training restaurant on the West Coast. It opened in 1990 as the brainchild of Robert Small, founding dean of the Collins College of Hospitality Management, as well as restaurateur Patrick Terrail (founder of legendary West Hollywood restaurant Ma Maison) and the late James Beard Award-winning chef Joe Randall, known as the “Dean of Southern Cuisine.”

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Most important of all: The Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch is one of the coolest dining experiences in Southern California, run by what could be some of the state’s next culinary stars.

Cal Poly Pomona, part of the California State University system and one of three Cal Poly campuses in the Golden State, is home to approximately 25,000 undergraduates and offers programs in agriculture, business management, engineering and more.

Students at the culinary school aiming to earn a bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Management take classes in everything from operations to finance to professional cooking. Working at the Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch (referred to by students as “the RKR”) is the capstone of a three-part food and beverage course, in which students — with the help of thoughtful instructors, of course — rotate through roles like cook, server and bartender. Overall, the restaurant serves to further the university’s mantra that students should learn by doing.

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And at the RKR, they sure do all the doing, from setting and busing tables to filling water glasses to seating guests to turning out a full menu of California-French........

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