Dolci Continues to Satiate Salivating Students

Author: Chelsea Coffin

Tired of the dining hall scene? How does a free gourmet dinner, complete with candlelight and full service sound? Try the Chateau dining room every Friday evening, when Dolci, a student-run organization, transforms the space into a full-blown restaurant.
The student head chef plans each Friday's four-course meal. Recipes come from cookbooks, relatives, the Internet or the Dolci cookbook that is always in the Chateau kitchen. Sometimes there is a theme like breakfast for dinner, finger food only or North meets South. Whatever the meal, creating a menu is not as simple as choosing a few appetizers, soups, salads, entrees and desserts. The head chef must be conscious of diners' needs, and provide a vegetarian dish and a dish without dairy products. All food must be ready at the same time, and some should be prepared ahead of time. Planning the meal and ordering the ingredients can take up to five hours, in addition to the 10 hours spent cooking it on Thursday and Friday.
The cooking begins on Thursday afternoon when one head chef, three cooks, one dishwasher and Richard O'Donohue, chef and manager of Middining, start prep work. O'Donohue, who works in Proctor, helps with the process by suggesting proportions, explaining the kitchen, locating ingredients and, most importantly, teaching the students how to create these sumptuous meals. The cooks prepare anything that can sit overnight, such as soup or a dessert. The atmosphere is fairly relaxed, especially when compared to the Friday afternoon kitchen.
The situation becomes more intense the next day, when two head chefs, five cooks, two dishwashers and two Middining chefs cook the rest of the meal. The panic truly ensues when the wait staff arrives three hours later. "That's when you start to worry that there's no way it will be done in time," says Amy Josephson '05, Dolci manager. "But somehow, it always gets served." In the next hour, head waitress Johanna Riesel '05 and six wait staff set up 14 tables.
The guests are seated at tables complete with white linen tablecloths, cloth napkins, candles, a menu and a fancy place setting at 5:30 p.m.! These guests must get tickets in advance on Tuesday night outside the McCullough Social Space from Diane Nguyen '05 at 7:00 p.m. These 84 free tickets are so highly demanded that students start a line for tickets around 6:00 p.m., often bringing homework or knitting to pass the time.
Nguyen also compiles the employee schedule each week. Any student with or without cooking experience is welcome to work at Dolci, so long as he or she submits a request via the Web site community.middlebury.edu/~dolci from 9:00 p.m. on Sunday to 9:00 p.m. on Monday. Nguyen reviews the submissions for the paid positions of dishwasher, cook or wait staff on Monday night and e-mails a schedule by noon on Tuesday. Not every employee works each week because Dolci wants as many people – new and experienced, to be involved as possible.
Dolci managers Josephson, Nguyen and Dustin Dolginow '05.5 spend a considerable amount of time outside the kitchen working on the behind-the-scenes organizational responsibilities. This year, they developed a Web site that explains Dolci's mission statement, reports the menu, enables better scheduling and provides contact information. This team also manages Dolci's budget from Middining, which has become a greater responsibility because Chateau is not used for the language tables, Atwater dinners, or meals this year.
This year, the management has become more intense in other areas because Chateau is exclusively used to host Dolci. This student group is solely responsible for stocking the ingredients and taking inventory each week. The head chefs must be conscious of using the ingredients before they expire, because the leftovers are no longer incorporated into other Chateau dining events. However, the managers enjoy this new responsibility. "Now it's like a real restaurant," says Dolginow.
A Dolci evening certainly has just such a professional feel without the hefty bill. Providing an enjoyable dining experience was part of Jill Santopietro '99's mission when she formed the organization with the help of three friends and the Chateau kitchen staff in the winter of 1998. To add to this experience, there is sometimes entertainment in the form of a jazz trio or a string quartet. The other half of her mission was to provide an environment for Middlebury students to learn more about the culinary arts. For Josephson as a head chef, recipes have become guidelines instead of rigid instructions. Explains Josephson, "If a sauce says rosemary, maybe I should try basil."
Dolci would like as many people as possible to experience both the cooking and dining aspects. "It's a unique resource that Middlebury has, both as a date atmosphere and a job outlet," Nguyen says. This is definitely true. Where else can you learn how to cook salmon over a bed of risotto and be paid or, as a diner, enjoy chocolate volcano cakes for free?