Commentary: Chef Joaquin brings flavor to Ritchie
As most of us Adrian College students know, Ritchie can become very disappointing after days and days of the same thing. This is why Chef Joaquin Suarez’s presence was an especially welcome change from the cafeteria norm. At first, I was a little unsure of what exactly Sodexo’s global chef program entailed, but I was quite surprised to see that they flew in this Colombian chef to cook us authentic Latin American cuisine.
Chef Suarez will be visiting various schools across the Midwest in order to introduce them to some of his native delicacies. Some of us were even lucky enough to spend some time with the guy, as he came and talked to my Spanish class about his experiences in South America and throughout culinary school.
I really enjoyed listening to him talk about his culture and to provide his take on life in the United States and in Colombia. Chef Joaquin has had some really interesting experiences, including cooking for the Dali Lama. To add even more flair to his time with us, he brought all these little candies for us to try, including roasted ant. While most of his treats were pretty tasty, he brought little sticky guava things and caramel chews covered in coconut; the ant was really quite disgusting.
Nonetheless it is pretty nifty that I can say I ate a bug. Apparently, roasted ants are a common thing in Colombia, and people there eat them without thinking twice.
I think I was especially surprised to find that Chef Joaquin himself would be preparing dinner for Adrian College in the International Line, and it seems to me that he cooked up a Colombian food storm. Ritchie really pulled out all the stops for him and he made a little of a lot of different things, including sausage, friend bananas, pork, some bean mixture, rice, and fried eggs.
I really think it’s so cool that he could bring a little culture to Adrian College’s campus and that he was so willing and excited to share something that means so much to him with the student body. It’s obvious that he is very passionate about his craft and his home, and I felt very honored to be able to spend some time with him and to experience a little piece of Colombia. Plus, it was pretty great that for one day Ritchie switched things up a bit, and added some excitement to our life.
Hopefully, Joaquin Suarez continue to impress students around the country the way he impressed me last week.