On Wednesday, Mar. 5, Grinnell College’s language houses and foreign language teaching assistants (FLTAs) came together to host their first-ever progressive dinner, where students were treated to a delectable spread of authentic cuisine whipped up by the FLTAs and residents of the Spanish, Chinese, German and French houses.
A progressive dinner is a dining experience where guests move from one location to the next, enjoying a different course prepared by the hosts at each stop. Students began with croqueta appetizers at Spanish House, before heading to Chinese House for the main course of potstickers, then finishing off with desserts — Kaiserschmarrn at German House and crepes at French House.
According to Spanish Language Assistant Elena Moran Zarzuelo, the idea for the event began last semester with Lizzie Roberts `25, Spanish House coordinator.
“We lived in a cul-de-sac back home, and my parents would have this dinner every year with everybody,” said Roberts. “One house would do appetizers, the other house would do a main dish, and then the others would do desserts. It was just a beautiful time to get together with the community … to connect with everybody.”
Roberts said she thought it would be “really cool” if the language houses could organize a similar event and share their cultures and languages. “People can get to see the inside of language houses, which are normally closed to anybody who doesn’t live in them,” she said.
At French House, pans lined the burners as residents carefully poured batter and flipped crepes with precision, each successful turn met with cheers and laughter.
“As a house, our favourite thing to cook is crepes whenever we have a house event,” said French House Coordinator Maddie Church `27. “We’ve been cooking non-stop, making them fresh.”
According to Sophie Lawrence `26, Chinese House coordinator, potstickers ran out within forty minutes of the event starting.
“They piled it on their plates,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting that many people to show up all at once, because I was like, ‘There’s no way that many people are braving this blizzard,’ but I should have known better. With Grinnellians and free food, we’re unstoppable.”
Lawrence said that she hand folded every dumpling and made the filling herself, even driving to Iowa City to buy the ingredients.
“I think most of them really liked it, and I think they made us really happy,” she said.
Meanwhile, German language Assistant Aaron Boeller introduced German House’s Kaiserschmarrn as “the emperor’s nonsense.”
“The story basically goes like this — the cook of the former emperor in Austria presented this to the emperor and he didn’t like it at first,” said Boeller. “The emperor said, ‘This is nonsense.’ But then he actually tried it, and he liked it, and then the name stuck.”
“I used to eat this a lot when I lived in Germany,” said Katya Lackey `27, German House coordinator. “We would go skiing in the alps, and a lot of times, in the lodges up on the mountains, there would be Kaiserschmarnn. It’s always a good skiing food.”
According to Zarzuelo, around 100 students RSVP’d for the event.
“Croquetas are my favourite,” said Zarzuelo as she and Roberts stirred batter and plated the finished fritters. “We cooked yesterday for like five hours, and another 10 hours today.”
“I ate everything,” said Sophia Ramalli `27. “Everything was good.”
Church said that French House is “used to hosting” such events. “I can’t speak for everyone, but we had a really fun time,” she said. “Definitely could not have happened without a strong community and some talented crepe makers.”
Lawrence said that the progressive dinner inspired her to host more events for the Chinese language community in the future.
“Anyone can come, and I’ll make a lot more dumplings,” she said. “I would just like to have an event where people come in and we can talk about trying the Chinese language classes here, or just anything at all.”
“It’s definitely nice to go out of D-hall and experience authentic food … I’ve never been to French House before,” said Yurie Okumura `25, who visited all the houses. “It was so good. It was a good opportunity.”
