Students can enjoy a night of elegance, culture and good food through the culinary arts department’s fine dining event that begins today.

Fine Dining events will be offered for six Friday nights over the course of second semester.

In order to get the fine dining experience, students need to make reservations in advance.  To make a reservation, students should email Chef Rob Hansen, a faculty member in the culinary arts program, at [email protected]. They should include their name, phone number, the number of people in their party and the time they would like to reserve.

Tickets are $20 per person, not including tax and tip. Guests can choose to be seated at 5 p.m., 5:15 p.m. or 5:30 p.m.

Students who go to Fine Dining can expect a dining experience that will last for about two hours with six courses that will be brought out individually.

The menu is created by the culinary students.

Each of the six nights of Fine Dining will have its own theme. The theme for tonight is Italian.  Some of the other themes will include French, Mediterranean and American.

As part of putting together the menu, the students will need to make sure all the dishes tie together and coordinate with the theme for the night.  Hansen said, “The dishes really reflect the region they’re coming from.”

The six courses will include a soup course, appetizer course, salad, intermezzo, entree and a dessert.

People with allergies or other dietary restrictions can enjoy fine dining as well. Each menu includes dairy-free, gluten-free and shellfish-free options.

The Fine Dining event is run by sophomore culinary students. This event allows them to showcase all the skills they have learned over the course of the culinary program so far.

Some of these skills include time management and communication as well as more specific skills such as menu building and knife skills.  The students will rotate roles each night, allowing each to get experience with all the different aspects of fine dining.

Hansen said, “Plated service, formal service is part of what [students] need to know so we try to recreate a way for them to see that in a controlled setting.”

These positions vary from waiting on the guests to taking on the job of sous chef, the second in command of the kitchen, for the night.

Sophomore culinary student Morghannne Sitton said that she is looking forward to taking on the role of maître d because it will stretch her abilities a lot. In formal kitchens, the maître d manages the waiters and interacts with guests.

While culinary students get a great deal of useful experience from fine dining, all kinds of students can benefit from it.

Hannah Delich, a sophomore culinary arts student said, “It’s a really neat opportunity for people to just have a fancy experience, where they don’t have to go very far.”