When I went to the Rose Cafe with Chef Hans, I didn’t exactly know what to expect. My first thought was that he couldn’t possibly talk about cooking for an hour. Surprisingly though, the whole hour was very enlightening and I realized there’s a lot more to the dining hall than just cooking pre specified recipes. For example, logistics plays a huge role in what we are served. The quesadilla station that used to exist in Rose was removed since it (surprisingly) took a lot of prep and time. Instead, the cookie platter has replaced it and has been a huge success.

Something I was struck by in the cafe was that Chef Hans really cares about how the workers at Rose feel. Their stress levels and morale are a key factor in his decisions of what to cook. He likes to get them invested in work and encourages them to do research on what dishes they’d like to introduce. I thought this was a great change to what we traditionally perceive food service jobs to be like. My own mother constantly stressed to me that I should never seek out a job in food service, since I would probably be treated terribly and my work wouldn’t be appreciated. I don’t think Chef Hans’ workers feel that way at all.

My own experience with dining halls is often pretty impersonal. Since you aren’t being waited on by anyone, it’s not like you can send your thanks to the chef through them. When I like the food, I tend to tell my friends who I’m eating with, but never the actual staff who cooked it. I don’t even tend to think of the people who cook it at all, which I now realize has been a mistake on my part. I think from now on I’ll make an effort to seek out the chef at a dining hall if I really enjoyed what they made, since I know the effort and planning that goes into it now. Overall, I was really impressed by Chef Hans efforts and ability to manage the dining hall.