Making International Dinners Exciting and Educational
By Paul Fairbrook
Published in the Canadian College & University Food Services Association (CCUFSA) Magazine (Winter 2006)
When we started to have international theme dinners at the University of the Pacific, we decided to use these once-a-year occasions to inform our students about the gastronomical traditions and customs of the country we were celebrating. We decided that instead of having a theme dinner every week or every month we would have special dinners throughout the year, but a truly "fantastic" international dinner just once a year. To do this, we started planning the event early in the fall, and usually contacted students from selected countries to help us in the planning of the event. We wanted these dinners to be not just delicious and fun, but also educational. This is how we did it:
1. Menus
We purchased the wonderful Time/Life "Foods of the World" series of cookbooks (Time-Life Books, New York, 1971), which included gastronomical information about most of the countries in the world. We then contacted the airlines serving the selected country and asked them for a thousand blank copies of their in-flight menu covers. Our first airline was Japan Airlines, and our second was Air India. Since some of our students at the time spent a semester in Bangalore, India and used Air India and Air Japan to get there, it was easy to get these airlines to agree (thereafter we used their menus to convince other airlines to cooperate).
We then prepared a two-page menu to fit inside the airline's cover. One side of the menu gave the culinary history of the country, and the other listed the menu items with a detailed description of each dish. This menu was then printed by the University print shop and stapled into the menu cover. The result was an attractive menu, with a lot of interesting facts about the country and its eating habits.
In selecting the menu items, we followed these rules:
a. The menu item had to he a genuine dish, popular in the selected country.
b. The item had to be acceptable to an American taste (e.g. Hawaiian "poi" just wouldn't
cut it with our students).
c. Whenever possible we would use the natives of that country (students, faculty or
outsiders) to guide our cooks in the preparation of these dishes.
2. Entertainment
We usually tried to combine the dinner with entertainment from students or others from that particular country. Here are some examples:
a. Japanese Dinner; The Director of our Language Laboratory convinced one of his friends, the owner of a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, to come and help us with the food preparation. One of our Japanese students also performed a native dance, in costume, during the dinner-and posters of Kirin beer (the students didn't understand Japanese writing so didn't know what the posters meant) were displayed around the walls of the dining room.
b. Indian Dinner; The owner of the India House restaurant in San Francisco, came to supervise the preparations of "Poppodoms", "Keema Samosas" and several other Indian delicacies. The Indian Vice Consul came from San Francisco and gave a brief talk about Mahatma Ghandi. Beautiful sari-clad hostesses, all U.O.P. students who just returned from a semester's study in Bangalore, decorated the dining room with arrangements of bananas and pineapples, Indian welcoming lamps and played Indian music. One mistake that we made was that we neglected to offer Hamburger steaks or Spaghetti to those students not willing to try the Indian curry dishes (mostly athletes). From that time on, we always had an American alternative on the menu!
c. All-Campus Latin American Dinner; In honor of our students from Elbert Covell College (a cluster school which taught all of its coursers in Spanish), we decided to offer an all-campus Latin American dinner. We hired a Mariachi Band for two dining halls, and a Latin American Student Band for the other three halls. We received lovely wall posters from several airlines as well as the Brazilian and Peru Tourist Bureaus. The U.S. Information Agency, Washington D.C. provided live television coverage for showing throughout the Southern Hemisphere, and flags from each country represented were donated by the father of one of our students.
d. All Campus Swiss Dinner; in honor of Albert Einstein’s 100th Anniversary, our faculty planned an Einstein Symposium. To support their effors, we offered our students a Swiss Dinner. (Einstein held 3 nationalities: German, Swiss and American).
e. All Campus German Dinner; German dishes are usually popular with our students and thus Germany became the focus of one of these international dinners. We obtained flyers and posters from the German National Tourist Office, Lufthansa Airlines, and a local travel agency. This dinner, cooked by one of our German-born cooks, was greeted with great enthusiasm.
f. All Campus Dutch Dinner; One year we happened to have three students from Holland and we got them to help us put on a Dutch dinner at the occasion of the "Eve of St. Nicholas" holiday. They dressed up in their native garb, one as a monk, and another as "Black Peter" who, according to custom beat the incoming students with a small switch. K.L.M. Royal Dutch Airlines provided the menu covers, and a Dutch family member provided suitable music (records) for the occasion.
