I’m so glad I signed up for this Rose Cafe to have a talk with chef Hans, because it was such an interesting time to learn about not just amazing food he created at Rose Dining, but also the managing strategies, and stories behind the scene. I have never thought about the science of preperation, crew morale in the diner team before, and this talk was beyond my expectation, and really worthy of time.

He introduced us some of the food material with interesting flavors and taste, such as Zumas, which is a red flower with fruit on it and if you put that in water, it will make the water taste like lemonade.

My favorite part is he talked about the creative dishes at the house dinner,  like the special chicken, and lamp dish that we have today. They all taste really good, but hearing him explaining how he makes the meet juicy with the equipment in Rose dining hall, how he merinate the sauce, I recaled the good food that I had before, and I was so appreciate them. He also talked about the experiment that they tried and some might fail, and they will make changes based on the feedback, some collected in the dish washing procedure.

It’s really a management strategy, how to make the employees excited for their work, instead of repeating the work. For example, Rose had Qusadilla before, but since they are best to eat before they get cold, which is really hard in the dining hall, and the person who make them involves a lot of work. Chef Hans recognized the problem and change it to different flavor of salsa.

I also like the comments by prof.Blalock, when we talked about the team morale in the dinning hall, he mentioned the trade off of team creativity and consistence quality. It brings me a perspective of thinking of management, team dynamics.

I think this is really a nice talk with a lot of learning as well as appreciation for the amazing food that I have at Cornell everyday. I really like this cafe time and enjoyed a lot!