(FORTUNE Small Business) – Ask a Chicagoan where you should go for the best meal in the city, and the answer is likely to be "Charlie Trotter's." This world-renowned restaurant in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood features three tasting menus a night, each with at least eight courses and costing $135 a person or more. The wine cellars hold 20,000 bottles, and diners are advised to make reservations three months in advance. "No restaurant in America," according to Wine Spectator, "comes closer to delivering a flawless total dining experience."

Every weeknight, however, chef Charlie Trotter delivers a different experience--one designed for local high school students. The kids come courtesy of Trotter's five-year-old "Excellence" initiative, in which he invites them to enjoy a free eight-course meal, tour the restaurant, and hear staff members talk about their passion and exacting standards. The students sit at the same tables and enjoy the same tasting menu that paying customers get. "This is about showing them what intensity is, and what exuberance is," says Trotter, 44.

On a recent Thursday night he welcomes a group of 20 students from George Washington Public High School. "Tonight we're going to talk to you about excellence," he tells them. "Everyone who works here is totally excited about what they do. That's what we want you to take away from this experience." The students sit at their china and silver place settings, wide-eyed and silent. "You can eat while we talk," Trotter reassures them, "that's the beauty of it."

He then turns the session over to staff members, who come running upstairs (often literally) from the kitchen, one by one. The kids eat smoked salmon in a chervil-and-citrus crème fraiche and beef tenderloin, and hear about working at a world-class restaurant. "The word 'impossible' is not in our vocabulary," says manager Jason Platt. "Once we lost track of someone's reservation and we had no tables available when the party showed up. So we just took them to Charlie's office, cleared off his desk, and served them a great meal right there."

The Excellence program isn't Trotter's only charitable endeavor. He also supports several local charities and has raised about $450,000 to fund culinary scholarships. "These things are worthy," he says, "but anyone can raise money and give it away. What's most interesting to me is having the young folks here in the restaurant, and spreading the idea that you get what you give."

For Melanie Curtis, 18, an assistant pastry chef at the restaurant, that lesson sank in when she attended an Excellence session two years ago. "I had never seen a place so elegant--it took my breath away," she says. "And they were giving us a message that wasn't just for business but for life." She asked about job opportunities and was hired a year later. "No matter what trials or tribulations are happening in my life," she says, "when I come to work, I know who I am. And I know I'm okay."