Ithaca College Dining Services introduced a chef showcase dinner series during Spring 2025, which features recipes from a celebrity chef each Wednesday at Terrace Dining Hall. So far, the showcase has featured recipes from chefs including Leah Chase, Rodney Scott and Julia Child.
The Terraces chefs prepared recipes from Black culinary pioneers for the February showcase dinners in honor of Black History Month and recipes from renowned female chefs in March to recognize Women’s History Month. In April and May, the showcase dinners will highlight recipes from chefs who have influenced the Terraces kitchen.
Executive Chef Kevin Grant said via email that he and the Terraces sous chefs wanted to introduce more cultural foods, and they thought that a showcase series could allow them to set aside time each week to spotlight chefs from a variety of culinary backgrounds.
“It’s a passion project for the chefs involved in its planning,” Grant said. “We felt that not only did these chefs deserve for their work to be showcased, but … we wanted a way to bring our excitement for food to the students.”
Grant said the dining hall typically follows a set menu cycle to repeat campus community members’ favorite meals and balance meals that require high and low preparation. He said special dinners outside of the menu cycle, including all of the meals in the showcase series, require intense planning: scaling recipes from feeding six people to hundreds, adapting recipes to fit the ingredients and equipment available and coordinating timing to ensure many dishes are ready at the same time.
Grant said the Terraces team started planning the showcase dinner series in November and finalized the schedule over winter break. He said he orders specialized ingredients up to three weeks before each dinner.
Sophomore Cristian Rodriguez, a student worker at Terrace Dining Hall, said the Terraces staff start preparing food for the chef showcase dinners two to three days ahead of time because they often involve more complicated culinary techniques.
“A lot of extra special work that we normally don’t do on other days gets put into Wednesday,” Rodriguez said. “Like, I remember we had pigs that got roasted. Those were there three days before, and [Grant] made sure to do everything and put them in a brine.”
Rodriguez said he has taken on some of the chefs’ usual food preparation work on Mondays and Tuesdays to allow them to focus on preparing for the chef showcase dinners. He said he often sees the main food line stretch around the dining hall during the showcase dinners. He said it is exciting to see so many people come to try the meals, and he feels proud to contribute to such unique dining experiences.
“Sometimes, I’ll see the things that I chopped or things that I cooked on the main line on Wednesday,” Rodriguez said. “It’s fantastic. I’ll go with my friends, and I’ll be like, ‘Hey, I was part of that. That was me. I chopped those.’”
First-year student Anna Stohs said she understands why the dining hall rotates the same meals in the menu cycle, but the consistency can become slightly boring — especially for first-year students who eat at the dining hall for all of their meals. Stohs said she looks forward to every chef showcase dinner because they add variety to her week.
“There’s usually food items I have no idea what they are, or I’ve never heard of them,” Stohs said. “I think that it’s a really cool opportunity to try food from all different types of people and all different types of groups.”
Grant said his team initially was not sure if some dishes — like oxtail, raw oysters and a whole hog barbeque — would be received well.
“It has been fulfilling to see the rewards of the risks we took with serving items like that,” Grant said. “We had to remember that bringing new food experiences to the community was the driving factor for these showcases and we couldn’t be scared to do the exact thing that we set out to do in the first place.”
First-year student Bean Cesari said they especially appreciate that the showcase dinners have spotlighted chefs from underrepresented backgrounds. Cesari said the showcase dinners have introduced them to new foods that they may want to try cooking if they get their own kitchen in an apartment later on.
Outside of culinary exploration, Cesari said the showcase dinners can give students something to look forward to and provide an important boost for students’ mental health.
“It can be really easy to get … in a rut when you get into a routine, and having something that kind of takes you out of it, even something little like a good meal like this, can be super-duper important — especially when it’s gray and snowy and depressing around here a lot,” Cesari said.
Stohs has attended every chef showcase dinner with her friend. She said they enjoy rating the food together and comparing each week’s menu.
“It’s kind of fun afterwards to meet up with friends, and then be like, ‘What do you think of the food, did you go to the showcase tonight?’” Stohs said. “When people don’t go, it’s always like, ‘Oh, you gotta go next Wednesday.’”
