Midwest Culinary Institute is operating the Faculty Club at UC, feeding its athletic teams

September 1, 2011

“…the best food we have had in training camp since I have been a coach!” Butch Jones, in recent Tweet

The Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State is spreading its entrepreneurial wings.

Not only has it secured the management contract of the Faculty Club at the University of Cincinnati, it is also feeding UC’s football team. And its men’s soccer team. And its women’s volleyball team. And, when the season rolls around, MCI chefs and students will feed UC’s basketball teams and other athletic teams as well.

And in their spare time, members of the MCI contingent at the UC Faculty Board are trying to drum up more business for the handsome banquet room on the eighth floor of the Richard E. Lindner Center, the curvaceous structure with the triangular windows that loops around the north end of Nippert Stadium.

“For us, this is a great opportunity to partner with an old friend,’’ said Cincinnati State President O’dell M. Owens, who formerly served as president of the UC Board of Trustees.

The agreement between MCI and the UC Faculty Club was more than a year in the making, and actually started several months before Dr. Owens was hired as Cincinnati State’s fifth president. According to Kathleen Ruppert, director of business development, strategic initiatives and entrepreneurial development for Cincinnati State, the agreement was inspired largely by the Faculty Club’s desire to enliven member interest and by Cincinnati State’s desire to grow the money-making side of the Midwest Culinary Institute.

The agreement involves three key players from MCI:

• David Robinson was hired to serve as executive chef. A native of New Zealand, he is an MCI graduate who worked in the kitchen at the Maisonette before moving on to fine dining restaurants in Boston, Washington, D.C. and Marblehead, Mass. and then opening his own restaurant in Portsmouth, N.H.
• Michael Fagan came over from the Cincinnati State campus to serve as banquet manager.
• Rene Howard was hired as general manager to oversee the overall operation.

At the Faculty Club, Robinson and Howard are refining a menu designed to appeal to the traditional tastes of an existing membership base while introducing more daring but moderately priced offerings.

The key, Robinson says, is using high quality ingredients and proper culinary techniques – food that is prepared well and presented properly.

“I used the menu they had last year sort of as a starting off point,’’ Robinson said. But diners are discovering that this menu isn’t ordinary.

Take the ordinary club sandwich, for example – a staple at the Faculty Club. It’s now served on Ciabatta bread, with smoked bacon and fresh roasted turkey and shallot aioli. The fries can now be dressed up with Parmesan cheese and truffles for an extra $1.50.

And the Caesar salad features Asiago cheese, roasted shallot dressing and, if you like, steak tips or pan seared salmon.

Those who read their menus closely won’t fail to notice the soup that leads off the menu – Jean-Robert's French Country Style Soup (Duckleg Confit, white beans) – or such entrees as Pappardelle con Pancetta or the Smoked Salmon Crepes.

Servers come from both MCI and UC, generally on co-op or work-study assignments.

“The students have gotten along quite well,’’ Fagan said. “It was important to both institutions that we hired their students, and so far it has worked out quite nicely.’’

So far the biggest challenge for the MCI team has been the training tables – the athletic side of the equation, particularly the UC football team.

The agreement calls for MCI to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner to all the sports teams during the training season, and most meals during the regular season. For the football team, that has meant coming up with enough food to feed 140 young men who are burning calories at prodigious rates.

Robinson must do this without burning up the profit margins. Given that the linemen – and the linebackers, the running backs, and even some of the receivers – are putting away as much as a pound of protein at lunch and dinner, that’s no small challenge.

The logistics are also daunting. On most days the MCI staff must feed the teams within 30 minutes, using the eighth floor banquet rooms of the Lindner Center, supplying the food lines from a kitchen on the 7th floor. Oh, and they don’t have a freight elevator or a dumbwaiter.

In one recent week, Robinson estimates, the MCI team served more than 2,400 training table meals.

“All of it comes down to preparation, and not just one time, but all the time,’’ he said.

Robinson says he and his staff have been working with the nutritionists from all the teams to come up with menus designed to keep players in top shape while providing meals the players look forward to eating.

“We’re bringing what they want,’’ Robinson said. “We’d like to show them there’s a healthy choice that tastes good and helps them to what they do.’’

By all accounts, the MCI team is getting it right. Put it this way: They have at least one fan with a lot of clout.

“CoachJonesUC: Lunch time and so far this has been the best food we have had in training camp since I have been a coach! #CincinnatiStCulinaryInstitute,” said UC Head Football Coach Butch Jones in a recent Tweet.