nosh nook #123 - wednesday, september 2, 2009

so this is dorm food (link)
09.02.09 - l.a. times - by david ross

in case you haven't heard, dorm food is the worst. they usually make it out of pigs' noses & discarded leather jackets & 1920s newspaper clippings, but it's college, so you live with it for as long as you can & hope that you don't get a tapeworm. i was lucky enough to only have to spend one year in the dorms & therefore only had to endure dining hall food for that year. the other three years, i was in apartment style housing, where i had a stove & microwave & toaster oven & was able to retain complete control over my cuisine. over time, i became quite the spicy stir fry whiz kid.

saul sutcher, a student at l.a.'s snooty occidental college (home to obama for two years) couldn't take dorm food either & decided to do something about it. as the l.a. times explains, after trying dorm food for a while his freshman year, he "started eating off-campus as much as (he) could afford." that first summer home, he interned at eccolo, "a high-end trattoria" in berkeley. sophomore year, he & a small group of friends started getting together for dinners that they made in the dorm kitchenette & by second semester, it'd turned into a full on cafe called "cafe norris" with a first meal that featured "pancetta-wrapped quail, butternut squash and ricotta ravioli, and tarte aux pommes for dessert." fancy!

this summer, he worked some connections to open a successful version of the cafe (cafe 20) back in his hometown of berkeley. now that he's back for his junior year after a summer working with small dishes, he's planning on creating dishes such as "braised goat, rabbit medallions and salad of house-cured anchovy with toasts." the kicker is that on the last day of school last year "signs appeared in dormitory kitchenettes stating they were to be used only for warming foods." sutcher is hoping that occidental will be flexible on the policy & still let them cook full meals. after all, the dinners build community. without fancy dinners, they'll have to resort to normal college community-building exercises--keg parties or passing the bong or something.