From the Field: Penn Dining Doubles Down on Plant-Forward Competition
- by bonappetit
The Wellness team and Wellness Cup winners. Left to right: Amanda Schlink, wellness coordinator; Sharon Brown, cook I; Jonathan Chase, sous chef; Mouhamed Mboup, executive chef; Imeshia Davis, cook II; Sarah Goff, wellness manager.
Penn Dining chefs competed in their second annual Wellness Cup Competition, showcasing their plant-forward spin on an American classic: the burger. The winning dish was a true Bon Appétit classic, featuring seasonality, waste diversion, and teamwork — all on one plate.
The team at Hill House Café created a 24-hour brined beet burger served on a house-made pumpkin rosemary focaccia bun with from-scratch chipotle mayonnaise, avocado, pickled onion, lettuce, and sliced tomato. Hill House edged out four other cafés to win the award. Judges rated dishes on taste, texture, appearance, creativity, as well as wellness and sustainability. The annual competition is part of the campus’s Dine Well, Eat Smart wellness education series.
“I wanted to do something different,” says Mouhamed Mboup, executive chef of Hill House Café. When creating plant-based burgers, “we often mix chickpeas and black beans, but I wanted to feature a straight vegetable. It can’t be more plant-forward than that!” When asked about his inspiration, he credits seasonality and memories of his parents hand-whipping eggs to make mayonnaise from scratch – mayonnaise, he says, that’s still the best he’s ever had.
The winning beet burger!
Cooks Sharon Brown and Imeshia Davis took on the challenge of perfecting the pumpkin rosemary focaccia rolls. This piece of the dish took a few tries to perfect, but the team’s persistence paid off in the end with a win! Davis’s favorite part of the process was seeing their efforts come together into the final dish, while Brown touched on their repurposing of leftover pumpkins (originally used for Halloween decor) as a main ingredient in their rolls.
Mboup recalls, “I had [the idea of using pumpkin] a few weeks before the competition, but I didn’t think about it again until I looked around the cafe and saw pumpkins everywhere. I was like, ‘let’s grab those!’” The team seeded and roasted those pumpkins, turning soon-to-be-composted decor into the bread that carried them to their Wellness Cup victory.
Other team members left their mark on the dish, with Sous Chef Jonathan Chase tackling the 24-hour pickled beet and Union Chef Brian Walcott honing his technique for the crispiest baked root vegetable chips that accompanied their burger.
The entire Hill House team emphasized the team effort that went into the win. “I’m very grateful to have such a great team, their support, and wanting to be a part [of the competition]” reflects Mboup. “I can’t thank them enough because they are the ones who put it together. This is definitely all of them.”
Submitted by Sarah Goff, Penn Dining wellness manager
From the Field is our series of submissions from team members working on-site in our cafés. These stories demonstrate the depth and range of the hands-on learning experiences – in wellness, food literacy, cooking, sustainability, and more – that Bon Appétit brings to the table for our clients and communities.