“I got trained by a guy who went to culinary school and I got trained by an old Italian man. I use that to translate into what I make every day.”
As we sat in Union’s Student Government Association’s office, Eli Patton, a sophomore engineering major, told me about his experience working at an Italian restaurant called Mama Baudo’s Chow Bella, where he started out as a dishwasher but eventually earned the position of head chef.
Patton is a student who takes campus involvement seriously: he’s the president of a fraternity, a welcome week leader, a former life group leader and the secretary for the sophomore class council (the latter position requires him to work one hour in the SGA office, the hour I happened to catch him for an interview).
Yet Patton still makes time for cooking, something students with far less on their plates do not. Influenced by his experience at Mama Baudo’s Chow Bella, he likes to make chicken parmesan and lasagna.
I think it’s fair to say that students like Patton are somewhat of an anomaly. Few would say “college student” and “cooking” go hand in hand—unless by “cooking” you mean heating up a bowl of instant ramen, as the stereotype goes.
I’ll admit, I fit the stereotype pretty cleanly. For me, cooking is in the bucket of “things I’ll learn how to do once I have a college degree and I’m forced to out of sheer necessity and nothing less.”
In defense of college students, though, it makes sense that we mostly don’t cook. College is busy, especially if you’re unpracticed in the art of time management, and Cobo (our affectionately named dining hall) is so accessible. There are options, there are people to eat with, it’ll always be there and, most importantly, all you have to do is show up. So, why do some students forgo this convenience, inviting their friends over for a dorm-cooked meal instead?
Though cooking is an activity requiring both effort and skill, to Noah Phillips, a senior social work major, it’s one that can also be relaxing.
“It’s very calming to me, even if I’m sitting and if I was making a meringue or something in the dorm. I don’t have any electric stuff so I have to hand whisk it. That might take me an hour to an hour and a half to do, but it’s relaxing for me to have something to do with my hands,” Phillips said.
Cooking, then, isn’t a mere means to an end. More specifically, the point of cooking isn’t only to have a tasty meal at the end of it—something you get through just to fill your belly. For Phillips, the point of cooking is also to cook.
“You make the dough,” Phillips said. “Then, you get butter and you have to whip it with some other ingredients and then freeze the butter so it’s basically in a square that’s the same size as the dough. Then you have to fold and knead it together, freeze it, fold and knead it together, freeze it, fold and knead it together. And if there’s a moment where you leave it out for too long or even knead it for too long, the butter will melt into the dough and you won’t get any of the flaky consistency that should come with a danish.”
To Phillips, cooking is both a science and an art. Bringing ingredients together in just the right way requires him to make use of both knowledge and creativity, which makes the result all the more worth celebrating.
Caleb Knapp, a junior physics major and the resident advisor for the dorm building Jarman, finds similar enjoyment in cooking. For him, satisfaction comes not only from being able to cook a quality meal but also from being able to provide one to others. He frequently keeps his door open so that his residents feel more comfortable and often offers them food when they stop by.
“I think there definitely is a stronger community when they come into my room, into my space, because it’s a more intimate place,” Knapp said. “We have the lamps—it’s just a nice place to be. So I think the community when I cook for someone is definitely a lot higher than when I go out.”
Food, to someone like Knapp, is not only a craft—it’s also a way to invite someone in. Eating is a universal need and is naturally, then, something people bond over. Knapp shows us how much more powerful that bonding can be when the person sharing a meal with you is the same one who made it. Giving your compliments to the chef is easy when they’re on the other side of the table.
As I sat across from Patton in the SGA office, still taken aback that I was talking to a former head chef, he voiced a similar feeling.
“Not everybody knows how to cook, or not everybody knows how to cook specific Italian meals at a trained level,” Patton said. “Not to say that I’m some great chef or anything, but it just gives me an opportunity to make other people happy through my food. Because I love food; I love learning about food; I love being able to eat different types of food. I love trying new things. And so by me cooking, it helps me share that love with other people, which in turn helps me build relationships.”
In spite of how much he loves cooking, Patton did note that he often isn’t able to as much as he’d like. Like every other student, he ultimately is at Union to do school. And when school gets tough, cooking has to take a back seat. There’s no way around it.
Still, though, Patton cooks when he can and doing so helps him get through the slog of college coursework. He’s recognized that cooking carries two things which we all fundamentally need: the opportunity to channel creative energy into a craft at a high level, and the ability to unite with others around the work it produces. Even if you aren’t the chef, you still benefit. If you don’t have a friend who cooks, get one.
Toward the end of our conversation, Patton shared some of the history of Mama Baudo’s Chow Bella with me. The second restaurant started by the Baudos, a prominent Italian family in Jackson, was named after the family’s matriarch. There, Patton learned some of her recipes.
Sadly, Mama Baudo’s isn’t around anymore. With no one left to run it, the restaurant closed down. Still, if Eli Patton invites you over to his dorm, and if he isn’t too busy working on engineering problems, maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to try one of her recipes.
🙂