Living & Arts

Food appreciation comes to nourish the bubble

In print | February 5, 2009

Food is essential, food is a delight, but food can also become bland and monotonous, as is unavoidably the case at Sharples. Perhaps the food is not as bad at Sharples as everyone says, but it can get rather tiresome to eat the same thing from month to month.

This past week, two events looked to break the tedium that is dining at Swat. Katherine Gao ’12 has started up a new club called Gourmet and Gourmands that will hopefully rejuvenate our food appreciation even after years of eating pasta bar twice a week. Meanwhile, Career Services held a lecture titled “Dapper Dining” that just may help infuse classiness into our meals.

Gourmet and Gourmands

With Gourmet and Gourmands, Gao aims to share the experience of food from all different cultures. Having grown up in a family that often threw dinner parties to explore different national cuisines, Gao hopes to bring that same love of food from around the world here to Swat. When asked about her inspiration for the club, Gao said “[My parents and I] would go out to various restaurants all the time, and I missed that on campus. So I thought I would start a club.”

Gao has many events already in mind for her club. She said, “One of the goals is to go out to many restaurants, not just your basic Italian food but maybe Ethiopian or Ghanaian.” If you ever wondered what Icelandic food is like, this club will be the perfect education. Aside from the restaurants, Gao hopes to hold movie screenings of food-related films such as “Ratatouille” or “Mostly Martha.”

The concept of the meetings is especially novel. This Tuesday’s meeting was a potluck of different dishes made by its members. The potluck was organized at their inaugural meeting, where they were divided into groups of two or three to prepare dishes. One of the potluck highlights was a delectable fried catfish dish. Gao intends to have themes, just as her parents did for their dinner parties, for future potluck dinners. For example, one potluck may feature a plethora of exclusively Chinese food.

Gourmet and Gourmands is an opportunity to break the monotony of Sharples and to experience fine dining at its finest. A true gourmand, Gao wishes to see you at future Gourmet and Gourmands meetings. Meetings are held every Tuesday at 9 p.m. in Kohlberg 334.

Dapper Dining

Last Saturday, Career Services held a talk doubling as a dinner called “Dapper Dining” that taught attendees to make good impressions on their future employers when faced with a fine dining environment. By fine dining, I don’t mean the “bring a wine bottle and a smirk composure to Sharples” type of fine dining. I mean the going to a fancy restaurant or a banquet and meeting with important executives type of fine dining: situations in which having good etiquette can be the difference between working for a multinational corporation or for your local McDonalds. Perhaps it’s not that drastic, but good etiquette never hurt anyone.

Robert Shutt, the guest speaker for the event, said during the presentation that “85 percent of success in business is attributed to personal interactions.” Shutt, who has been featured on the CBS Evening News, stressed the importance of networking in building a career. His mantra for any networking dinner is that it’s not about the food but the conversation. Hence, much of what he taught dealt with maximizing potential to network. The “power hand” was a particularly helpful tip of his. Let me elaborate.

Imagine you are at a banquet. Banquets usually have a section where you just stand around and eat hors d’oeuvres, mini-quiches or something, and drink a beverage, lemonade let’s say. So to maximize your networking power, you need to figure out how to effectively eat, drink and network at the same time. This is where the “power hand” comes in. What you do is hold a napkin between the pinky and the ring finger, a plate between the middle and fore fingers, and a cup between your thumb and forefinger of your left hand. With this, you essentially hold all the food-related items in your left hand and leave the right hand free to shake hands or pick up a mini-quiche. But remember to use that napkin. It all comes back to good etiquette.

Shutt went on to give other priceless pointers, like following the leader, which translates to the one you’re trying to impress. By following the leader you can make sure that you are not underperforming or showing your boss up in etiquette. Harry Apostoleris ’12 said, “It’s good stuff to know when you’re schmoozing or need to make a good impression. I agree that all the stuff he told us is very useful information in making sure you land that dream job. It hurts when you work really hard at something for many years and then fall short just because you slurped your soup the wrong way.”

Travis Rothbloom ’10 summed up the goal of the event best when he said that the tips were “little things that will hopefully be engrained in my head, and I will be able to use when the situation calls for it.”