Author: Lisa Kraege
Its 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. While you’re sleeping off those regrettable Friday night decisions and dreaming of Marketplace tater tots, Saul Sutcher (sophomore) and Elissa Chandler (junior) are awake, and will be for at least 16 more hours. Instead of tater tots, they are thinking of earl gray ice cream and roasted sunchokes, ricotta ravioli and fresh tuna. If you don’t know what a sunchoke is, never fear. Sutcher and Chandler have taken it upon themselves to relieve the limited on-campus dining options of Saturday night by bringing you Café Norris: a student-run restaurant in the Norris Hall Common Room that serves you intricate creations including things like sunchokes (incidentally, sunchokes are the roots of a sunflower species that taste sort of like potatoes and sunflower seeds).
Last issue, the Weekly reviewed their food; this issue, we’re talking to its creators. Most Oxy students’ idea of a Saturday night meal vacillates between Cooler specials, off-campus thai food, and the occasional jaunt into L.A. for an expensive treat. Sutcher and Chandler want to remedy this with their Café.
“We love good food, and we wanted to be able to expose the Occidental campus to good food at an extremely reasonable price,” Sutcher explained. Both he and Chandler have been cooking since they were young. Chandler has always tended towards desserts, while Sutcher focuses on meats and the main course. Their differences are what make the three-course meal that Café Norris offers possible, as well presenting a learning opportunity for both.
“We do disagree about things at times, but for the most part our skill sets compliment each others really well,” Sutcher said. Chandler agreed. “I’ve been really lucky – I didn’t know too much about preparing meat and I have learned so much from Saul.”
Their individual experiences have also lent themselves well to the café as a whole. Chandler, a politics major, studied abroad in Paris last spring, where she had an internship at the cooking studio of a 3-star chef.
“In Paris I was exposed to the most lovely desserts you can imagine,” Chandler said, “the bakeries are full of delicate pastries that range from a simple apple tart to layers of custard and pastry infused with strawberry and Szechwan pepper that could take hours to prepare.”
Paris also showed Chandler the food culture that abounds there, where temporality is surpassed by the value of food. “One morning I convinced a baker to let me come in at 3 in the morning to see how they do it all,” she said. “Food culture is much more important there and the pastries are all individually made every morning.” Through Café Norris, Chandler has had the creative power to dream up desserts like the ones she saw in Paris and to experiment with her own ideas.
Chandler and Sutcher got to know each other last summer through mutual friends, where they discovered their similar tastes and culinary interest.
“I think he always wanted to do Cafe Norris, and when I told him what I had been up to abroad and how much I love cooking it just made sense that we would do this together,” Chandler said.
Thus Café Norris was born. But starting up a restaurant, not to mention a restaurant run from a dorm room kitchen, required more than just the newfound executive chefs.
“To start off we needed napkins, chairs, tables, table clothes, plates, bowls, silverware, pots, pans, knives, water glasses as well as basic ingredients such as salt, pepper, olive oil, flour, sugar etc.” Sutcher listed, “this took us about a semester and a half to accumulate.” Most students are stressed enough trying to find a working pencil, so one can only imagine what trips to IKEA, planning and budgeting would do to fragile dispositions.
But most students are also content to complain about the lackluster Saturday night options, rather than start up a restaurant at the expense of their own wallets. Sutcher and Chandler paid for most of these necessities with their own money.
“Some of it, like pots and pans, my parents bought for me, but in overall terms we’re not even close to breaking even,” Sutcher said. “We earn money each week, but in terms of everything, we’ll never make it back.” This doesn’t bother him or Chandler though. They aren’t in it to make money, but rather to spread their enthusiasm and ideas about food culture to the Oxy community.
Sutcher and Chandler also started FEAST (Food, Energy And Sustainability Team), a new club that aims to create a sustainable garden on campus. FEAST and Café Norris are unofficially related, but they share a common theme.
“They are both a part of the movement that Saul and I are passionate about and want to start on campus – getting students to think more about what they eat, where is comes from and how our eating habits impact the environment,” Chandler elucidated.
FEAST and Café Norris also fall into a greater, international theme of sustainable local food culture, especially relevant in the modern day economy and environment. The Slow Food Movement is an international, non-profit, eco-gastronomic, member-supported organization founded in Italy. It has gained more attention in the United States as the environmental movement has come into focus. Slow Food is aimed at the promotion of many of the same goals as Café Norris and FEAST – creating a more aware, sustainable and enjoyable food culture.
Café Norris has certainly succeeded in at least part of these goals, evidenced by the fact that its 16-20 spots available for Saturday nights have been entirely booked for weeks.
Kosa Gaucher-Lambert (sophomore), who is a close friend of Sutcher’s, says he has only eaten there once because he hasn’t been able to get reservations for any other time. “When Saul first told me about Café Norris I thought that it would just be his close friends coming out when we could to support him,” Gaucher-Lambert said.
Sutcher, an economics major, comes from a culinary minded family in Berkeley, CA, where his father is a baker. He started practicing more involved meals on Gaucher-Lambert and his friends in preparation for Café Norris. His mini fridge was stuffed with hunks of Gruyere instead of the typical college fare of beer and half-eaten cupcakes. “This is when I realized that he actually knew how to cook,” Gaucher-Lambert joked, “nonetheless I was skeptical that others would just assume students couldn’t prepare high quality meals worth paying for.”Preparing these high quality meals does take time. The executive chefs plan the menu throughout the week, sending e-mails back and forth and making changes. However, the real deciding factors in making a menu are the seasonal ingredients.
“We want to have things that are in season,” Sutcher explained, “Ingredient seasonality is something that is key to a successful meal. If the ingredients are in season, they are most likely going to be local and of the highest quality. When you use really good ingredients, you can let them speak for themselves.” They buy such fresh ingredients at various farmers markets throughout L.A. This allows for a good portion of creativity in menu genesis.
They have only a few guidelines. They prioritize fresh ingredients, and if possible, organic and local ones. They also think portions. “Neither of us like heavy meals,” Chandler said, “We don’t want people who come to Cafe Norris to feel deathly full.”
This is only a piece of the puzzle that starts to shape up as the week goes on. Although the Café requires real work in order to bring quality food to lucky student diners, both chefs enjoy Saturdays. “Saturday is by far my favorite day of the week this semester. I wake up Sunday morning and wish it could be Saturday again,” Chandler said. Her excitement is testament to the passion that goes into creating something, be it a rest
aurant, food, or a place where students can go to share a meal outside the realm of dining halls, but within the realm of convenience.
Julia Bleckner (junior) is a close friend of Chandler’s who helps serve and plate during the busy Saturday nights. She explained her involvement with Cafe Norris as a show of support for student action. “I am learning a lot just by watching Saul and Elissa, and it just seems right to support such strong passion, creativity and hard work,” she said, “plus, with the reservations booked through the semester, I know I will always get to taste every meal, and not have to miss out.
The physical execution of the cafe is the culmination of each week’s work. Chandler starts the physical preparation on Fridays or before, preparing pastry dough and ice creams, or other things that can be made in advance.
After their 7:30 wake up call on Saturday, Sutcher, Chandler and whoever else wants to meet at 8:00 and head to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, where they pick up fresh produce and whatever else they want to make. They stop at the Hollywood market to pick up any other ingredients and arrive back at school to get to work. From there they cook until the 7:30 p.m. start of dinner. From there, in a one-oven kitchen that certainly isn’t stainless steel or top of the line, they serve their meals in restaurant fashion.
They wear matching chefs jackets inscribed with “Café Norris” on the lapels and serve their three course prix fixe menu on large white plates, with the help of Bleckner. They explain each dish as it comes out, and make an effort to talk to the broad mix of students. The meal lasts about two hours. By the time they have cleaned up, it’s usually around 11:00 p.m., and Sutcher, Chandler and Bleckner are finished for the night.
“I have worked in food before and I have never had so much fun,” Bleckner said of the process. “In previous jobs the focus has been on making money while here, it is just about having a good time.”
Student run restaurants akin to Café Norris are not an entirely new idea to colleges of the United States. Many universities with culinary schools run restaurants, and others, like Allegre at Ball State University in Indiana, are the result of food production classes. However, most of these restaurants are at big schools, where they offer programs in restaurant management or culinary arts. They are also intended more for business practice than for pure student enjoyment and education.
Café Norris is in the unique position to culturally enrich the palettes of the Oxy community. It gives access to fine dining and culinary traditions, something that most of us only taste from through the knowledge of more sophisticated adult friends or NY Times restaurant reviews. It coincides with the national and international food movement, bringing a double purpose to their position by offering exposure to local and sustainable cooking.
“I just think that Cafe Norris is a great example of how, as college students, we should really dive into what we love to do,” Bleckner said. “The fact that Elissa can’t wait to make a cherry dessert, but she will for three weeks because she believes in only using food when it is in season is actually inspiring.”
Sutcher and Chandler plan to continue Café Norris in the fall semester of 2010, but will probably go in hiatus when Sutcher goes abroad in the spring. After that, the plans are undecided. Both hope to continue cooking.
“In terms of what I see myself doing in the future, I hope to be involved with food in some way,” Sutcher said. “Whether that involves opening my own restaurant or just cooking for my family, I love food and it will always be in my life.”
Chandler illuminated the aspiration behind Café Norris and her and Sutcher’s own personal inspirations. “Eating is a huge part of every persons life, and most are not getting nearly the amount of satisfaction out of it that they could be. There is something so wonderful about sharing a good meal with friends, we just don’t want anyone to miss out on that.”
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