Fort Worth restaurant chefs take over at TCU

Once a month, Texas Christian University (TCU) features local Fort Worth-area restaurant chefs who guest-star in the dining hall.

For TCU Dining by Sodexo, the dining hall takeover concept is two-pronged. The initial goal is to provide students with something new and exciting.

“From a marketing perspective, it’s amazing working with different restaurants, learning their different cultures and styles, and how they communicate with students,” said TCU Dining Unit Marketing Specialist Swati Bharathi.

The second objective is to help students who hail from across the country to discover new local restaurants to enjoy when dining off-campus.

“We want to support our local restaurants and pop-up showcases is how we thought of doing it,” said General Manager Scott Majestic. “It has been one of the most popular events we’ve held for students.”

It all begins with a sit-down between the visiting chef, TCU Dining Culinary Director John Flores, and General Manager Scott Majestic. They map out logistics and the menu that will feed an average of 1,000 students who attend.

“Our staff and chefs procure the ingredients, prep the dishes, and cook guided by the chef or managers from the actual restaurant,” said Majestic. “Utilizing our seasoned campus dining team alleviates the need for the restaurants to bring in their own people and the stress of cooking for a tremendous number of students all at once.”

Featured local restaurants have included Tokyo Café, Spiral Diner, Dwell, bartaco, and Righteous Foods, Fort Worth’s clean eating restaurant.

“Working with the TCU dining team was a great way to meet students who love clean eating. It was a pleasure to share some of our favorite recipes,” said Righteous Foods Chef Gabriel Benjamin.

On the day of the event, students receive menus and promotional giveaways.

"It was awesome seeing such a mixture of both regulars and new faces in line excited to try our tacos,” said bartaco General Manager Leah Carricato. “We loved working with Chef John and the TCU culinary team and hope to get to do more events like this as we make more new friends in Fort Worth.”

The takeovers occur in Market Square in the Brown Lupton University Union.

“It was great working with all the local chefs,” said Flores. “I’ve been able to see many cooking styles and thoughts on how we could make student events work best here. All the chefs have such great personalities and you can tell they love what they do. I can't wait until next year to bring them back.”