campus club, field trip 1

Along with the rest of our class, I visited the Campus Club last week, which is a restaurant/bar/event center on the top floor of Coffman. Usually it’s open to members only, but our class was given the opportunity to tour, meet the executive chef, and have a meal together in one of their dining rooms.

This was paired with a trip to Cornercopia, the student organic farm on the Saint Paul campus. Getting to see both these places in one day was a great experience because of the close relationship they have, which both Courtney, the coordinator of the farm, and Beth, the chef at Campus Club, talked about. Visiting Cornercopia and almost literally getting to see the vegetables we would be eating later that day was wonderful—besides knowing that this is what they do every day, all year!

The farm and the Club have kind of a symbiotic relationship in that Campus Club buys the vast majority of their produce from Cornercopia. For the farm this is huge, as it gives them a major, reliable purchaser year-round. That support is a large part of what currently allows them to keep running.

One of the reasons this relationship works so well, and exists at all, is because of Beth, the Club’s chef. She’s very committed to buying from local, sustainable, ethical food producers and has really transformed the sourcing of the food at the Campus Club in her time there. It's inspiring how she's constantly evaluating her food purchasing and working to support local producers—she’s definitely a chef with values and goals about the food she serves, which I have a ton of respect for.

I loved hearing her tell the story of how she got into professional cooking and how she ended up at Campus Club. As a woman working in the culinary world, I have no doubt that she’s dealt with a good number of frustrations and challenges but she had a lot of patience and perspective, and a sense of humor about it.

I took a few pictures on our tour—this poster was in the hallway outside the room we had dinner in... I appreciated it.

Periodic Table of the Vegetables... my kind of chemistry

Unfortunately it was a really cold, wet day so the photos weren’t that great. I’m sure in the summer it’s beautiful—you get an awesome view of the downtown skyline, I can only imagine what it must look like at night!

Into the kitchen!

All the ingredients for the curry were pulled out so she could demo—including this BEAUTIFUL Cambro full of veggies. Look at how colorful it is! I think this grabbed me just because it was so bright among all the stainless steel in the kitchen.

I didn’t get any shots of the food we had (luckily plenty of others did), but it was pretty out of control delicious. I was in the Wednesday night lab, so we had the coconut milk vegetable curry (YUM) with yogurt and cilantro chutney (also yum). Definitely had seconds, possibly thirds if I remember correctly.

This trip was definitely a privilege, as far as membership and access to the Campus Club goes. I don't think many students get the chance to go up there, let alone see the kitchen, talk to the chef and get dinner. So thank you for making this happen for us (Kris, Jenny, Haley, Eric)! It was wonderful!