UT students serve up fine dining at University Center

Lamb chops, wild rice pilaf, shrimp, and crab meat lasagna, is not a menu you would typically find on a college campus. But, it's perfect for the student ran "Ready for the World Cafe'."Senior Tamer Eladawy is the restaurant's general manager.

"As general manager I helped prepare the food, make sure that everyone knows what their assignments are."

Tamer likes to picture the restaurant as one of his future country clubs. When he graduates he wants to go into country club management. But for now, he and his team are being graded on how well they apply everything they've learned about running a restaurant. From waiters, to hosts, to marketing and figuring up food cost, everything is ran by the students.

"It probably took me about four to six hours just to do food cost alone," Tamer says.

The students are graded on a number of components.

"How much they thought outside the box, how much they actually put those pieces that they learned in the textbook to play, and actually if they drove those numbers," Instructor Donetta Poisson says." "Like any business, you're still looking at those numbers and making sure you can deliver something the public wants."

The Cafe is open two hours a day,and the first two days of business Tamer says they averaged close to 100 customers. After just days of being open, the students know their hands on experience has been invaluable.

"It's tough, this is a real life situation you know, if food runs out we need to run food, so it really gets us a good idea for the world," Tamer says.

Ready for the World Cafe continues through the end of semester and the menu changes every week. The all you can eat buffet is open from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Monday-Thursday in the Hermitage room, on the third floor of the University Center. Aramark cooks all of the food served in the Real World Cafe.