As part of a "Food and Identity" course offered to first year Communication and Design students, our English 101 class recently went on an enjoyable lunch outing to the Practice Restaurant of the School of Tourism and Hotel Management. We were all very curious about the meal and very hungry before we got there. Thanks to the friendly staff and students at the restaurant, we were able to follow the food's fantastic journey from preparation all the way to our stomachs.
Upon our arrival, we were welcomed by the clink of knives and forks and the aroma of food wafting from the clean and well-organized kitchen. Students practice 'Food Preparation Techniques' in this kitchen and it seems like the students and the kitchen personnel in general enjoy what they are doing. The chef, Henk Kuchlein, who is also the 'International Cuisine' course instructor, kindly showed us around the kitchen and talked about the course. He believes that cooking is the most difficult subject in the curriculum because it requires knowledge of chemistry in addition to taste, touch, and imagination.
The restaurant offers a weekly rotation of nine different menus, including Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Turkish, and North American cuisine. The menus are fixed and priced very reasonably - a mere
2.000.000 T.L. is charged for 4 or 5 beautifully-presented courses. The meal begins with either a soup or a salad or both, continues with a delicious main course, and finishes with a wonderful dessert.
The Practice Restaurant will be offering a new set of weekly menus starting again in February. They accept reservations from everyone-just call ext. 5001. If a fancy (and filling!) lunch served with five-star ambience sounds attractive to you, the Practice Restaurant is definitely worth a visit.
Funda Çakır (COMD-I)
