back in the day one of my campus jobs was working in catering so I saw a lot of these events in a little different way. The food is forgettable. I looked up the current menu and they have certainly renamed everything with farm-to-table sounding names but it is the same basic items - choice of airline chicken breast, beef tri-tip, salmon, or vegan mushroom/tofu grey matter served with a variety of salads/cooked vegetables and rice/pasta. A plated meal starts at $40 per plate but easily much more than that with linen, china, dessert, coffee, wine, etc.

I will say though, it was a job where I learned a lot about people, processes, and the science of getting passable meals to hundreds of people in a compressed time. And I learned how to back a box truck down the serpentine loading dock ramp at the Pavilion with just mirrors!

A buddy of mine spent a career in the “hospitality” industry where he was the director of services for several large casinos and various large resorts throughout his career. It never occurred to me that such a career existed. But it’s really fun to go to dinner with him. His expectation is that a high end dinner should be perfect from the presentation to the meal itself. He’s polite, but critical when those expectations are not met. We usually end up getting extra care after he makes a few comments to the manager, lol.

so the thing about hospitality is we aren’t really selling a chicken breast or a hotel bed, we are selling an experience and the product is actually the customer’s feelings. A hotel housekeeper cleans 16-20 rooms a day. They aren’t clean in that time. We are selling the perception of clean hitting the things you are likely to notice. If the room smells good when you open the door, the bed sheets are pulled tight, and the toilet is spotless, most people relax into that feeling of cleanliness and safety, none the wiser to nasty underwear jammed between the mattress and the wall mere inches from their face. Banquets are tricky because the experience being purchased is really a non-distracting meal delivered on time so that the keynote speaker, wedding, etc. can be what you remember. The challenge comes when a guest doesn’t give a hoot about the event and is just there for the food. They will be disappointed every time about Golden Corral level food prepared en masse, kept in a hotbox for 2 hours and served at steakhouse prices with hurried service.

That sounds about right. When will caterers learn that tri-tip is not fancy dinner food ? It's for barbecues and also sandwiches at the horribly named Jack's Urban Eats. Apparently Jack's vision was to sell boring salads to customers who found the continued bastardization of the language cute. Actually the catering you described sounds a bit like Jack's. If you're going to put tri-tip on a menu you might as well add hot dogs too.

What you described still sounds better than a benefit dinner I once attended. I wasn't expecting fancy, but when I arrived before the stated arrival time I found out the only dinner options were heavy pasta dishes, and that no beverages of any kind were included in the price. None of this was disclosed beforehand. I left without saying anything before it started, and I hope they enjoyed the donation. It was a buffet-style dinner, so I'm sure someone else ate my food. It was a learning experience.

I think one reason they don't share the menus for these functions ahead of time is to keep interested parties from bailing if they don't like the options. It's not enough to simply donate. You need to be there so they can soak you through auctions, and coaches can subtly convince you to give them money through perceived accessibility.

It's pretty impressive that you were successfully able to deliver food to the Rec Hall with no incidents. The campus has ever so many buildings it can use to host a dinner, and they had to choose the one with more ramps + steps than they know what to do with. It must have been a very large function.

the loading dock for the pavilion is in the northwest corner. Following construction of the ARC it is a series of switchback ramps to back down but you can deliver to any level. The trick I learned is face dead forward, trust your mirrors and rear wheel pivot point and manage the nose of the truck on the switchbacks. If you need to do dinner for 1000+ upper and lower or you want to do happy hour and silent auction on upper level and move to the floor for dinner and program, pavilion is the big house. ARC ballroom and AGR room at Beuhler aren’t that big. Freeborn used to be perfect for those 500 seat gigs but it’s been closed for a long time.

I personally like tri-tip but from a logistics perspective it is also a great beef entree because of its hot life. Maybe some changes in the last 20 years but here’s how we used to do it. Prep work done in Segundo commissary kitchen, cook and final prep at Silo catering kitchen, baked goods from Tercero, china and dry goods in MU basement. It was like Amazing Race to get everything where it needs to go on time. Once a hot item is cooked you have 120 minutes you can hot hold above 140 degrees before you must discard. Tri-tip you can cook a lot of portions at once and it maintains quality if you wait until right before service to carve. For that quantity of cooking, most proteins are going to get a quick sear and then into the combi-oven. Actually the chicken breasts came frozen with “pre-printed” grill marks and went straight away into the oven. When you talk about NY strips, people want that cooked to order and the practicality of cooking hundreds of steaks to perfection, transporting from Silo to Pavilion and getting 600 portions plated and down in a 15 minute window with any sort quality is not practical at least at a price point that works.

No prep area in ARC?

attached to the ARC ballroom is a “catering kitchen” with a refrigerator, ice machine, and sink but no cooking or raw prep capacity. Typically everything was made at Silo or Tercero and on site we did an assembly line to slice bread, meat, cake, etc. and plate everything up in the moment before service. ARC had the most complete catering area. Older venues like Putah Creek Lodge, Rec Pool Lodge, Buehler Center you basically work out of the truck and whatever back hallway or vacant room you can because there is no F&B infrastructure.

Shouldn't one or two of those have had those capabilities included in their design?

Does Mondavi host dinners?

Mondavi doesn’t really have a ballroom suitable for banquets and I don’t think they were eager to have food inside. Did plenty of “light receptions” outside there though. Overall, big plated dinners were a minority of events. Much more common were meetings and receptions with things like cocktail weenies, sandwiches, chips/dips etc. I think some facilities are just old. Putah Creek Lodge only had 100 amp electrical service to the building so you had to be careful about not running the air conditioning and coffee pot at the same time.

It's fascinating to hear about your experiences in food service for special events. Thanks for writing about your memories.

you know it’s kind of funny, I may well have learned more about life from working at Sodexo, taking Spiridakis’ ancient history classes, and playing in the Aggie Band than I did from my major classes. It’s part of what I fear may be lost in the world of online college. I ended up being at different times a project manager and operations manager in the hospitality/sports/entertainment space and I think those experiences helped guide how I (try to) approach people and situations.

One of my most amusing memories was that Chancellor Vanderhoef didn’t actually enjoy wine as much as politically he was supposed to. He used to have us hide a case of light beer and pour it in a white wine glass so nobody would be the wiser.

For the Team Aggie meals before home football games, we used to get really good food. One week we would get buckhorn, then other name brand restaurants catering the event. The last few years its been exclusively UC Davis food service. And I had to laugh about those chicken breasts that they serve as Fugawe mentioned. I’d rather have peanut butter sandwich. But, their fajitas are actually decent, lol.

As a top ag school and the whole farm-to-table deal, you'd figure we'd put a little more effort forward. Heck, we even have our own meat market.

How is the relocated on-campus Pub these days?

I recall classmates ocassionally sneaking over to Tercero late at night, coaxing the night bakers into getting fresh made donuts during finals.

I thought this was an interesting photo from the endowment dinner. Looks like there are no hard feeling with Pablo taking advantage of his grad transfer opportunity

Nor should there be any. When he came to Davis it was understood he would be a junior transfer.

From the ucdavisaggies.com bio

"Tamba will join the Aggies program as a junior in 2023-24…"

He completely fulfilled that 2-year commitment. Just because some recent football players have enjoyed sticking around for 5-6 (7?) years doesn't mean every successful UCD student-athlete has to spend any extra eligibility in Davis.

I wasn't a student-athlete, but I was definitely ready to be done with the place during senior year.

We tend to look back on our time in college with rose-colored glasses, but that is inspired somewhat by the comparitively less fun experience of real adult responsibilities. It's easy to forget the things about the UCD experience that maybe weren't fantastic. Don't blame him for moving on.

I’m not blaming him at all. Applaud him for getting his degree and his contributions on the court. I’m just pointing out that he’s still welcome within the program which I think speaks well of both the staff and Pablo

I think it was always a non-issue. Players come and go in the basketball program every year, and he more than fulfilled his commitment. We, his teammates, and coaches had every reason to believe he was done after this past season. Why would he not be welcome ? Having a graduating senior attend the event is a good look for UCD. It reinforces the success of donor contributions.

I think it's better to go to grad school somewhere different anyhow. Different city, different professors.