The email blast went out shortly after last week’s United Students Government meeting. By informing each organization on campus, USG President Terron Grant was sending every student a message. It was that they, too, could have a voice in an important decision that would affect the lives of both residents and commuters of SUNY Buffalo State. It was the next big discovery of a meal.

“It’s a chance to impact all food services next semester,” Grant said.

The concept is fairly simple. Students are invited to turn in recipes to the organizations they are affiliated with before Oct. 7, 2016. At this point, USG and Chartwells Catering will decide which of the potentially hundreds of recipes are the best and an Iron Chef-like contest, called “Recipes from Home,” will be staged in the Student Union Social Hall on Oct. 26 from 12-2 p.m. This is according to Louisa Grizard, Chartwell’s director of marketing, who wrote an email on the subject.

“I have no preference on what type of food will win,” Grizard wrote. “I just know the winner’s recipe will be delicious!”

Students in the Union reacted favorably to the idea. When they were asked about the current food service, there was some polite hedging.

“I think it could be better, there’s room for improvement. They should have more variety,” said Janibell Riguez, a senior fashion design-technology major from New York City. “Baked mac and cheese, that’d be great.”

And it’s not only students who are excited.

“All you have to do is submit the recipe and our chefs will collaborate and pick the ones that are acceptable,” Bob LaDuca said, a worker in food service at the college for 25 years. He gave some more insight into the process:

“Sometimes if they’re too spicy, you can’t serve them to the whole population or they may alter it a little bit. Plus they have to cook batch cooking which means for a large amount of people so they may have to change the recipe slightly but it works pretty good,” LaDuca said. “They set up a full display right in front of the room and they have student participation and the folks who submitted the recipes, they get to talk about the recipes to the students.”

When asked, LaDuca said his favorite dishes are Italian. Some examples were manicotti and lasagna.

“It was actually an idea that I had last semester,” Grant said in his office at the Student Union.  “I was really trying to figure out if we could do things differently outside of the typical standard committees and a way to involve the student body. So that was just my initial approach to it because food service committee meetings are great but they don’t get large student turn out.”

It may just be the most relevant thing on campus, especially if it’s three in the afternoon and you haven’t had lunch.

email: [email protected]