♦ Fresh meat and vegetables from local farmers.
♦ A “Chef’s Table” featuring Italian, Middle Eastern, Asian, and American contemporary cuisine.
♦ Six different house-made salads and a salad bar with 24 toppings.
♦ A “comfort food” station with “stick-to-your-ribs” offerings like meat loaf, fried chicken, and green beans.
♦ Gourmet burgers and steaks on an outdoor grill.
Is this how you remember the food at Sparks?
Bon Appetit arrived at Wabash 11 years ago with a promise to improve dining with “food choices that celebrate flavor, affirm regional cultural traditions, and support local communities without compromising air, water, or soil now and in the future.”
The result?
“I’ve dined in many a college dining hall through the years,” says political science Professor Ethan Hollander in a review at yelp.com. “But none beats the one at Wabash for quality or choice.”
General Manager Mary Jo Johnston thinks alumni would be surprised by her crew’s “culinary creativity and the extent to which we work with local farmers.”
Executive chef Jason Anderson says the biggest change is the range of foods offered to the 300-plus students fed every day in the Great Hall: “We try to blend what the students want to eat with our philosophy as a company.”
Anderson says he and his colleagues go out of their way to accommodate student needs.
“We had a gentleman last year who loved different stir fries. He’d go to the salad bar and pick his vegetables and we’d cook it up special for him.”
Anderson’s and sous Chef Tim Murray’s approach to providing students with nutritious choices is an educational process itself.
“We call it stealth cooking—coming up with cool ways to eat these super nutritious foods,” Anderson explains. He recalls a stew he served made of quinoa with Italian vegetables, tomatoes, and basil.
“You tell these men, ‘Hey, we’ve got quinoa here,’ and they’re not going to touch it. But cook it in an interesting preparation, and they’re willing to try it. This winter we made an incredible vegetable chili with black beans as the protein source, and it was more popular than the traditional one.
“I’ve been surprised by the positive feedback we’ve received on some of these things. They’ve really been open to it.”
Johnston and Anderson invite alumni and their guests to dine in the Great Hall anytime for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.