By DYLAN DE’MARTINO
The Student Culinary Council (SCC) held a special event to celebrate the conclusion of this semester’s midterm season in the Marketplace on Thursday, Feb. 28.
The event was marked by popular music played in the cafeteria and a menu featuring items selected in part based on results from a survey conducted earlier in the semester. Some of the included menu items were twice baked potatoes, sirloin steak and salmon.
Another feature of the event was the presence of numerous SCC members centered around a suggestion poster that had been assembled inside the Marketplace. Students were invited to contribute input to be written on the poster.
Two items that appeared to be popular suggestions based upon their prominence on the poster were pierogies and chocolate strawberries.
The SCC functions to coordinate various activities with Sodexo related to food service initiatives.
“Each week, the [executive board] meets with key members of the Fordham Dining Services team to strategize and plan upcoming events, themed menus, campus involvement and responses to customer feedback,” Rebecca Moore, Sodexo’s marketing manager, said. “Our management team is in constant communication with the [executive board] and all members of the SCC. General Board meets occur once a month with managers in attendance.”
Moore also noted that interest in the SCC at Fordham has increased significantly over the past few years since its foundation.
“As of fall 2012, the SCC had a record 600 plus signups at the Fordham University Club Fair,” she said. “Of those students, 102 officially joined the SCC.”
This increase compared to the provided membership figure of 70 for the 2010 school year obviously indicates an upsurge in students’ desire to play a more active role in the planning of their dining experience at Fordham.
The planning of events like the SCC’s end of midterms celebration at the Marketplace and the solicitation of feedback are part of initiatives Sodexo uses to improve its image amongst the Fordham community, which seems to have taken an unfavorable direction in past years.
Some of the other activities include the periodic featuring of guest executive chefs. Moore elaborated on the next chef to be featured.
“A longtime supporter of local farmlands, sustainable culinary practices and responsibly sourced ingredients, Matthew Weingarten has always strived to create menus that reflect a sense of place and time,” she said. “In his role as Culinary Director for Innovative Solutions, Chef Weingarten’s artisanal approach to cooking is highlighted by his passion for culinary traditions. He has garnered acclaim for ‘some of the city’s finest Greenmarket cooking’ from Time Out New York and food that is ‘thoughtful, well executed’ from New York Magazine. [He] was appointed to sit on the board of Overseers for Chef’s Collaborative, the preeminent nonprofit organization dedicated to making sustainable practices second nature for every chef in America.”
In addition to SCC and Sodexo organized activities in the cafeteria, Asili, the African American Students Association, hosted an event on Wednesday, Feb. 27 to celebrate Black History month.
The fare consisted of many soul food classics. The event also featured live music. For approximately two hours, from six to eight in the evening, the Fordham Jazz collective performed at the event to enhance the ambience of the event, performing classic jazz standards as well as funk and reggae hits.
With multiple events transpiring at the Marketplace and more scheduled for the future, it may behoove students who would be potentially interested to stay current on what is happening on campus through the Sodexo and SCC Facebook pages as well as postings within the Marketplace.
