Justin Herman has a funny sort of dream.

He loves the Titanic. He wants to know what it was like to be on board, to experience the best the Edwardian Age had to offer.

The Charlotte Observer reports that Herman, 48, got a taste of his dream last month. He got to be the maitre d’ for dinner on the Titanic.

Well, sort of. Instead of an ornate dining room on a doomed ship, it was on the fifth floor of Johnson & Wales University.

And this was a shared dream, a senior project where Herman, Tyler Eason, 22, and Cory Hitson, 29, had to command a dozen other seniors.

In the J&W cooking programs, most students spend two years getting associate degrees in culinary arts or baking and pastry. If they go on for bachelor’s degrees, they spend the next two years on management.

“If you could just cook and put a plate out, it would be easy,” says Brad Beran, an associate professor in hospitality. “But you have to do it profitably.”

Each week, three students have to be the managers. They pick a theme, set a menu and a budget, develop recipes, assign fellow students to jobs, and then make the whole thing run, a theoretical restaurant that only opens for one meal.

The real trick is that the managers have to manage. They aren’t allowed to do it; they have to lead the other students through it.

The clock started running at 4 p.m., with dinner at 5:30. Beran floated around with his clipboard.

He’s a stickler for safety. He stopped Brianne Staggs near the stoves, where bacon was sizzling.

There’s a violation here. Staggs stood, startled, as the smell of bacon wafted around.

“Stop thinking like a student,” Beran coaxed her.

She forgot to turn on the exhaust fan.

“She’s pastry,” someone teased her. “She doesn’t know what a range hood is.”