International chef cooks at WSU

Lebanese Chef Georges El Kik would have likely never set foot on the Weber State University campus if it wasn’t for a conversation the North American Sodexo President had with a Chicago-based university president a few years ago. Their conversation led to the creation of the Sodexo Global Chef Program that brought Kik to the university from Wednesday to Friday of last week.
The program began after the Chicago-based university president told Kik that Japanese students wouldn’t eat at the university cafeteria because the Japanese food was not authentic. That was a problem for the university because 20 percent of its students were Japanese. Sodexo quickly moved to authenticate their Japanese food.
“The head chef of Japan came for a month to retrain chefs on how to cook Japanese food the right way,” said Sodexo chef Jeremy Goldsmith. “In turn, (the Chicago-based university) was able to retain all those students and that’s how the (Global Chef) program started.”
The French-based Sodexo Company, which operates in over 80 countries, has continued the Global Chef Program in order to bring a few of its very best international chefs to tour universities in the United States. Kik was the first Global Chef to ever represent Lebanon. When he learned he would be one of three Global Chefs to tour the United States this fall, he had two months to prepare.
“It wasn’t easy,” Kik said. “I couldn’t speak in full sentences.”
His wife, however, graduated from an American institution and is proficient in English. When he told a group of eight in a presentation he gave Thursday that his wife wouldn’t listen to his requests for food unless he spoke in English and an audience member said, “That’s good,” he laughed and quickly replied, “It wasn’t good to me.”
Kik started his presentation with a brief introduction about Lebanon. The audience erupted in laughter after Kik said that in April a person could be skiing in the mountains 30 minutes after swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. After the introduction he answered questions about Lebanese food and culture, and his experience traveling outside of Lebanon for the first time in his life.
Kik began working with WSU Sodexo chefs to prepare Thursday’s lunch and dinner at 9 a.m. Wednesday and didn’t finish until 8:30 p.m. The chefs prepared large platters of Lebanese arrangements of lamb, oriental chicken, tabbouleth salad, eggplant tahini dip, cheese rakakat, hummus and several other dishes. Wednesday afternoon’s dessert was a fried pastry filled with cream and covered in sugar syrup called znoud el sit.  
“I don’t know if (the WSU Sodexo chefs) can make it well,” Kik said. “Nobody in two days can learn a lot of things. But I’m sure they now have an idea about our food.”
Only 26 people attended Thursday’s dinner in the Wildcat cafeteria, which was prepared to serve a group of 80. More than 75 people attended Friday’s lunch. Carey Anson, the coordinator for campus computer labs, was one of them.
“You don’t get a strong flavor of one ingredient, so it’s not very spicy,” Anson said. “You can still taste the okras, you can still taste the tomatoes.”
Adrienne Gillespie, coordinator of the Center for Diversity, said that food opens people up to other cultures and people.
“There are all sorts of ways to taste diversity, and food is definitely one of the easiest and friendliest ways we can do it,” Gillespie said.