Café Tuesday returns

On Tuesday, students in Mt. Hood’s Hospitality and Tourism program hosted their first Café Tuesday event of the term at Lincoln Station Grill in Downtown Portland to gain experience in serving and preparing meals for customers and guests.

Roni Doyle, who does the marketing for her class, said that Café Tuesday is an event run by two different classes in Mt. Hood’s hospitality program: a culinary class and a catering class.

“It helps us, as students, learn the back of the house, the front of the house, running a restaurant — fine dining, we call it,” Doyle said.

Café Tuesday will be going on every two weeks, and will feature a different style of cuisine each time, she said. This past event featured Northwest Cuisine. “We focus on flavors from the Columbia River. There’s, like, seared salmon, we always have optional vegetarian dish, and then there’s chicken for people who don’t like seafood.

“Every week is different. April 29, it will be Italian week,”  Doyle said. “On May 13, it will be Asian week, and then on 27th of May, it’ll be Spanish week. And then the very last week, we do Café Tuesday of the semester, we do on June 3, and that’s a Western-style buffet barbeque.”

The event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and reservations are taken until 12:20 p.m. The program also invites Mt. Hood students, PSU staff, and any other drop-in customers. Dining capacity is 48 persons.

Guests who decide to attend Café Tuesday have the option of buying a three-course meal for $10, or to purchase a la cart items separately. A three-course meal costs $5 for Mt. Hood students.

Doyle enjoys the event and said the program helps students to understand event planning.

“It makes us aware of what people go through when we’re doing catering or restaurants. It gives us the perspective on how things are run – you have to be very consistent and precise in what we do,” she said. “We have to understand the cost of food — breaking it down to the whole cost of what a plate would cost to make.”

On the culinary side, those students get “to learn hands-on through a chef on how to prepare things, so they have a chef working with them and teaching them. They’re learning hands-on, definitely more than we are because they do all the cooking,” she said.

Doyle said she hopes to see Mt. Hood students at Café Tuesday. “I encourage students to come down and check us out. When we raise money from our tips and gratuity, [it] all goes back into our program, which helps sponsor peoples’ scholarships and other things.”

Doyle made her rounds downtown to drum up business. She was “pounding the pavement at local businesses, making them aware where can you get a three-course meal for 10 dollars. It is a really good deal,” she said.

“I think it’s important that every Café Tuesday that we do this term that we fill up, so we all have the experience of running a very busy place.”