Bon Appétit Management Company

Bon Appétit teams across the country celebrated our 18th annual Eat Local Challenge by going beyond simply serving delicious local food to helping guests shop locally, too.

Students here sometimes complain that “there’s nothing to eat,” but that’s a result of their lack of creativity, not Bon Appétit’s. If you eat pasta Alfredo every meal, no matter how flavorful, it can get boring in the long run. Top Chef Dining Hall is designed to get people thinking outside their usual plates: in 30 minutes, five teams compete in making a three-course dinner (appetizer, entrée, and dessert) with only the ingredient and equipment available in the dining hall.

With such student organizations as Farm Club, a brand-new cooking student organization headed by young Swedish chef Vayu Maini Rekdal, and Food Truth, considered the most active group on campus, it’s no wonder Carleton College students flocked to compete in the campus’s first annual Sustainable Iron Chef Competition, hosted by Bon Appétit Management Company in honor of the first national annual Food Day. Cooked up by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day is a movement for “real food” across the country.

Bon Appétit at Goucher College kicked off November with a new tradition for the campus: Iron Chef, college style. Representatives from each of the four classes—freshmen through seniors—were tasked with creating a delicious meal in a limited time frame not only for a panel of discerning judges, but for the entire café… during the dinner rush. That meant cooking not just for three or four, but for hundreds. Adding a whole new element to the competition, this certainly left the student competitors an appreciation of what kitchen staffs in college dining halls do three times a day, every day!

At the Second Annual North vs. South Champion Chef Competition hosted by Bon Appétit at Washington University in St. Louis last month, competitors from opposite sides of campus came out in honor of Bon Appétit’s Low Carbon Diet Day and competed in an Iron Chef-style competition with a focus on low carbon cooking. (Read more about what that entails here). Composed of BAMCO chefs and student sous chefs, each team had exactly 30 minutes to cook the most delicious, low carbon meal for a panel of expert judges, which included area chefs from Winslow’s Home and Eclipse Restaurant, as well as Ligaya Figueras of Sauce, St. Louis’ premier culinary magazine.

By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation   “I love a good competition!” With these words, Cristin Ashmankas entered herself into a Bon Appétit Sustainable Cooking Challenge at Lesley University, where she is an assistant professor in the earth science, natural sciences, and mathematics department. Cristin grew up in a family of great cooks and says she is known among her friends (her “test subjects”) for her culinary experiments and what has become known as “Cristin’s secret ingredient.” The day of the event, Cristin arrived wearing a cupcake-dappled apron and a big grin. Her competitor was Diego Mejia, a Bon Appétit cook at Lesley University. Born in México, Diego spent most of his childhood eating his mother’s savory dishes of tortillas and beans, tomatillo and mole sauces. After arriving in the U.S., he started working for […]

By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation   On Tuesday at Gallaudet University, BAMCO Executive Chef Jay Keller stood behind a beautiful spread of ingredients including Pennsylvania purple potatoes, Maryland oyster mushrooms, and tofu from across the street (more photos here). He had just 30 minutes to create a meal from ingredients chosen by the students from this bounty, as part of the East Coast tour of the Sustainable Food Challenge. After a bit of debate (chicken or salmon?), they finally settled on wild-caught Alaskan salmon and chicken produced without the routine use of antibiotics, as well as local oyster mushrooms, Swiss chard, and apples. As Jay went to work, the students, BAMCO staff, and I got to talking. Some highlights from our conversation: “I’ve heard that only half of the meat in the café is […]

Event on Tues 2/8/11, 12:30-1:30pm. See details below. By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation A new challenge is coming to Bon Appétit chefs across the country:  Create a delicious meal using only sustainable ingredients that are selected by the audience, and do it in just 30 minutes!