KNOXVILLE — Homegrown, simple, delicious.
Those three words sum up the theme of this week’s menu at the Ready for the World Café on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus.
“It is an outdoors, from-your-mother’s-garden theme,” student café manager Emily Culvern said. “We wanted to incorporate things that could more easily be made from a campfire and grill. Simple, easy, yet delicious natural flavor.”
The menu includes sweet potato salad, roasted zucchini and yellow squash, duchess potatoes, baked eggplant, hula barbecued chicken, grilled brown sugar pork chops and lemon dill tilapia.
Also, because November is Diabetes Awareness Month, Culvern — who is president of the Diabetes Advocacy Board at UT — is planning have a table where diners can make a donation to diabetes research and get an orange silicone bracelet that says “I will give my all for Tennessee.”
The café is an international buffet operated by students in the advanced food production and service management class, Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism (HRT) 445. It is open from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday in the Hermitage Room on the third floor of the University Center.
Diners pay $11 for the all-you-can-eat buffet or $9 for a plate of food to carry out.
On Tuesday, Nov. 2, the café will be the site of the Chancellor’s lunch discussion with students. The first 50 students who RSVP to Beth Gladden at beth.gladden@tennessee.edu will dine free, courtesy of the Chancellor’s Office. The café will remain open to the public during this event.
This semester, there are 18 students in the Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism (HRT) 445 course. In small groups, they take turns planning the menus, marketing the café and working in the café. ARAMARK, UT’s provider of dining services, prepares the food.
Student manager Culvern is a senior in HRT from Morristown who works at La Costa restaurant on Market Square. The week’s co-manager is Trey Bodkin, a senior in HRT from Memphis who has worked at a barbecue restaurant.
C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)