Lunch at John Purdue Room opens with LEED-worthy menu

Healthy, sustainable, local and seasonal -- values that describe lunch at the John Purdue Room in Marriott Hall, now open for its second semester in its new location.

"We worked real hard to make this a LEED Gold facility, and to keep true to that, we have created a menu reflecting environmental values," says Mick La Lopa, associate professor of hospitality and tourism management, who teaches about 90 HTM 291 students who run the restaurant's lunch operations.

Marriott Hall earned Gold status in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) ratings based on design, construction, operations and maintenance features.

The restaurant's values mean that, for example, Indiana tomatoes show up not only in a salad with Tuscan bread, but also in the Shrimp and the White Bean Salad.  Or peppers, also grown near Frankfort, are used to make the "Mediterranean Grilled Peppers." And the "Prosciutto Pete" sandwich, built with toasted focaccia bread, is topped with a fried egg from Sheep Dog Farms, a local truly cage-free source. The outcome is not only good lunch, La Lopa says, but also good education.

"This is where our industry is going," he says. "These are the trends. To properly prepare our students, we want to demonstrate that in our classroom. And it's a restaurant, but it's also a classroom being run by the students. Professors are coaching."

Calories are listed for each menu item, thanks to the 10 nutrition science students in the class, La Lopa says. They input the ingredients into a software program they had learned to use, and it computed the calorie count.

Another norm in today's hospitality industry is a corporate mission or credo, and the John Purdue Room lunch is employing a credo called "FISH!" after the popular book of the same name based on the way Pike’s Place Market in Seattle is managed. The 127-word credo emphasizes "play, be present, make somebody's day, choose your attitude," La Lopa says, noting that Purdue's HTM teaches to industry standards. At the same time, it is a class on quantity foods, so the comment card is replaced with a report card with grades.

The John Purdue Room testifies to professional outlook. Customers can view the work in the kitchen, which has state-of-the-art technology. Moreover, paintings by Arne Kvaleen, a retired art professor at Purdue and widely known exhibitor, rotate seasonally. The paintings are for sale.

Hours for the John Purdue Room lunch are 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday-Friday. Current entrees, served with soup or salad, range from $12 to $15. Reservations are encouraged; call 49-46845. The current menu will be posted at www.cfs.purdue.edu/htm/about/restaurants/restaurants.html.

Dinner at the John Purdue Room, offered by HTM 492 students, will begin Tuesday (Sept. 11) and operate 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday.