The day I left for New York, the Harvard Culinary Society held its big event for the first semester: an evening expo where Harvard students met local restaurant vendors. I’ve been with the Culinary Society for three years now but this is my first as Vice President and our first with this new event—but it was a hit! The picture above is of the representative from Clover, a vegetarian fast-food joint that focuses on local and fresh food, making their signature pour-over coffee
A representative from Wagamama, a fast-paced modern Japanese restaurant, sampling delicious mushroom broth with noodles.
Vendors loved it because they got to interact with the Harvard Community, many members of whom don’t know the locations to eat around the square; since nearly everyone has the mandatory meal-plan, eating out is not as critical as other school. Students loved it because they were able to try samples and receive coupons from new places or old favorites.
A vendor from Qdoba, a mexican fast-food burrito spot, putting together a wonderful beans-rice-salsa sampling.
As mentioned before, this was my first time planning a complete event from scratch. Luckily Harvard helps make the process easy—there are so many options for funding student ideas and locations available to rent for events. If you decided to take a similar leadership role on at school, just make sure you have a great team behind you. We did and so the set-up and event went smooth, even though over 200 or so students were waiting to walk-through the sampling line.
A sampling from Finale, a small upscale restaurant focusing on decadent cakes and drinks, of their Boston Cream Pie.
Speaking of funding, one of the new projects the Culinary Society is working on (which we just got funded) is a semester-based Culinary Magazine! More than ever students on campus seem to care about food issues and justice—one of the more popular classes (one I’m in and will talk more about soon) is a new Science and Cooking course; a sophomore recently lead and won a campaign to get Harvard to source only Cage-Free Eggs; and the career office has been putting together more workshops on how to get careers in hospitality, travel, and wine.
I’ll keep you updated as work on the Magazine progresses. Though, you can bet that “food porn” pictures (as they’re called)–such as the one above–will be a glossy highlight! By the way, the picture above is from this cute, all-vegan soda-fountain type ice cream shop in New York—who knew vegan cake batter soft servecould be so delicious?!
All this reminiscing over food has made me hungry! My friend from California just arrived last night to visit and with today off classes for Veteran’s Day, I think we’ll be going into Boston for a nice lunch while the weather is still warm (or, at least, not snowing yet!).
Until next time,
~Natalie
