UC Berkeley prototypes next ‘it’ menu items

At the University of California-Berkeley, the smallest dining hall is mighty: Clark Kerr Kitchen serves as both a dining hall and test kitchen for new concessions and catering menu items.

The Chalkboard Specials series, introduced by Berkeley Events and Conferences, is a testing ground for new catering and concessions items that pop up amidst the regularly scheduled menu. Comprised of “items we’re trying to determine whether it’s worth it to add to the cycle menu,” the program began last semester and “went full-tilt this fall,” says Frank Pazzanese, assistant director of Berkeley Events and Conferences, Cal Dining. 

A database of student feedback to Chalkboard Specials is being built by dining staff throughout the program, compiling students’ gut reactions to new menu items.

This isn’t a qualitative study (with responses like “I didn’t like the sauce” or “Could you make this with less garlic?”); rather, Pazzanese is looking primarily for “yes” or “no” answers. “Would you buy this or no?” he explains. “I come from a restaurant background and we’d do two or three specials a night, and the consistent ones, we added that to the menu.”

And by “full-tilt,” he’s talking not just about the program, but about the wide range of bold flavors as well. Some new items that have been up on the chalkboard: Stuffed avocados, pesto arancine, farro cakes, loaded tater tots, street tacos, a “double double” cheeseburger (inspired by In-N-Out burger), Korean chicken wings and a quinoa-cranberry salad bowl. 

“We’ve been doing a ton with quinoa,” Pazzanese says. “Every night, [in the dining hall] we do three composed salads, and one is always grain-based. We just went to a lentil conference in Michigan, so we’ve been doing a lot with lentils lately.”

One item that’s done especially well is the Cobb sandwich, which is exactly what it sounds like—the components of a classic Cobb like hard-boiled eggs, blue cheese and tomatoes—in a sandwich with flank steak or chicken.

The bold flavors and fun ideas come naturally to Pazzanese’s event-oriented expertise, but there’s crossover potential into dining hall menus as well. A few different versions of fries, kimchi fries, garlic fries and urban fries (Frank’s Red Hot sauce and blue cheese) sound tailor-made for both watching the game and attending a casual faculty luncheon. 

After gathering feedback, the kitchen crew returns to the proverbial drawing board and gets nitty gritty with each recipe, recording the whole process to ensure consistency for big volume cooking.

“From there, we build the recipe, cost it out, take photos and download the comment cards to a Google document,” Pazzanese says. “It’s a question of ‘Are we consistent?’ and ‘Do we want to continue to make this product?’”