Chefs

By Dana Benson • Photography by Tommy LaVergne

There was a time, not long ago, when Rice was widely criticized for the quality of its food. “Grade D” or, worse, “Prison Grade,” it was called. Some items were said to contain “mystery meat.” Mark Ditman, associate vice president of housing and dining, even recalls an item about Rice that was published in Princeton Review about a decade ago. “The university got positive remarks, except for the food service,” Ditman says.“I think the exact words were, ‘bring a bag lunch.’”

A lot has changed since then. Today, Rice is home to highly trained chefs committed to offering a variety of food made from the freshest and healthiest ingredients possible. Several Rice chefs have earned the nation’s top accreditation, and many of them have won awards in cooking competitions and events. Call them the Iron Chefs of Rice.

Chef Ben Fonbuena, Mark Ditman, and Chef Roger Elkhouri.

After hearing the searing criticism of Rice’s food services, Ditman made it his goal to make improvements and change the university’s reputation. A key element in doing that was the creation of on-site college serveries and kitchens to replace the old central kitchen.

At the former central kitchen, Ditman explains, food was prepared rather than fresh, and it was shipped from there to the various colleges. Now, housing and dining operates the South Servery, which serves Hanszen and Wiess Colleges, and the North Servery, which serves Martel, Jones, and Brown Colleges. In addition, there are four smaller college kitchens. The decentralized serveries and kitchens use fresher, more nutritious ingredients, and the chefs have the autonomy to create their own menus, something that students really appreciate.

As he was establishing the serveries and individual kitchens, Ditman also turned his attention to personnel. “We launched training for our staff that involves all aspects of working in a kitchen, from proper sanitation to the very basics, like how to hold a knife,” he says. “We also started recruiting top chefs and encouraging our employees to enter culinary competitions and earn professional accreditation through organizations such as the American Culinary Federation [ACF].”

Two chefs in particular stand out at Rice: Ben Fonbuena and Roger Elkhouri. Chef Ben is a certified executive chef (CEC) through the ACF, while Chef Roger is a certified chef de cuisine, just one notch below CEC. Between them, Chef Ben and Chef Roger have won more medals than Jesse Owens and Mark Spitz combined. They—as well as other campus chefs—compete in events sponsored by the ACF, the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS), and other organizations.

“I’m the one who has won the most awards,” boasts Chef Roger, executive chef at the South Servery, “five silver, five bronze, and one gold.”

The events usually follow an Iron Chef-type format, where competitors are given a fixed amount of time to prepare numerous courses using certain ingredients. They don’t know what foods they’ll be working with in advance, so competitions require a spoonful of quick thinking and a pinch of creativity.
Chef Roger describes one event he competed in with two of his Rice peers. They were supplied with two pieces of trout, a duck, a sirloin, a ham hock, and shrimp. “We were given 11 shrimp, but we had to have 12 plates, so we couldn’t prepare entrees that each included a piece of shrimp,” he recalls. “It was tricky; we had to improvise.”

The team made shrimp bisque and smoked trout ravioli as starters, and for the entrée, they made medallions out of the steak, served with an Asian sauce and duck hash.

Competitions are challenging and stressful, Chef Roger notes, especially because the competitors are on stage with a lot of people watching. But in the end, the competitions are not just about medals and bragging rights, although those things are nice. “It’s all about discipline and honing skills,” says Chef Roger. “If I can work under pressure and develop my skills, that will reflect positively in my work environment.”

Clockwise from top: Rice’s other award-winning chefs: Edward Castillo, Rick Schisser, Selena Rivera, Maricela Rodriguez, and Kyle Hardwick.

Chef Ben enjoys the competitive environment as well. He is an award-winning ice carver and will chair the NACUFS Southern region Culinary Challenge Competition this year. According to Chef Ben, the executive chef in the housing and dining department, his success and that of Chef Roger has been infectious. Other chefs now are participating in competitions, including Rick Schisser, Kyle Hardwick, Maricela Rodriguez, and Ed Castillo. Chef Ben encourages that because, ultimately, it’s faculty, staff, and especially students who benefit when chefs get ideas and bring them back to their jobs here.

“We want students to be excited about our food. We don’t want them to get bored, because then they won’t want to eat on campus anymore,” he says. “We want them to say, ‘I wonder what they’re serving today.’”

But competition is not for everyone, and so continuing education is encouraged as well. All of the chefs in key positions at Rice are certified at some level through the ACF, Ditman notes, and the staff who work under them either are certified already or working toward it. “In this community of exceptional people, including Nobel Prize winners,” Ditman says, “we’ve got shining stars in our culinary group, too.”

Becoming certified, particularly as an executive chef, isn’t easy. The certification process includes both written and practical tests and is the only method in the United States to rate chefs. Rice’s chefs are very familiar with the requirements because Cohen House serves as a site where certification candidates—even those from outside the university—can complete their practical test. Seeing others go through the test may inspire Rice chefs to do so as well, Chef Ben says.

Along with their commitment to offering top-quality food service, chefs Ben and Roger also share a long-time love of cooking that developed in their youths.

Born in the Philippines, Chef Ben was raised mainly by his grandmother. She taught him to cook, telling him, “Someday you will have a family, and you must learn how to cook and clean.” Yet his dream as a child was to be a doctor or surgeon. Chef Ben’s mother married an American, and when he was 17, they moved to the United States. He knew he would be drafted to serve in Vietnam, so he volunteered instead and was shipped there in 1972. “I worked as a chef in Vietnam,” Chef Ben recalls. “I can remember getting shot at and explosions near me, but I was still cooking. I had all my gear on in the kitchen: helmet, boots, fatigues.”

Chef Ben stayed in the Army for 22 years, serving as the European-wide food advisor and in the Gulf War in 1990, where he served as many as 800,000 soldiers in a tent city in Saudi Arabia that was the size of the Rice campus. He came to Texas to work at the Texas Commission for the Blind, and started at Rice in 1997.

Chef Roger, who is from Lebanon, also traces his interest in cooking to the women in his family. “When I was 12, I became fascinated with cooking, and that came from my mom and my grandmothers,” he explains. “I started to realize that people are very influenced by food, and I heard a calling.”

He came to the United States about 14 years ago and started working in the restaurant industry. He also studied accounting in business school, which he says has been useful in his career, and later earned a culinary degree from the Art Institute of Houston.

“I came here because I heard it was the land of opportunity, and it has been,” says Chef Roger, who has worked at Rice for nearly five years. “But people mistake these words, ‘land of opportunity.’ They think they’re going to come over here and opportunity will just fall in their laps. But you have to look for it and work for it, and it’s really, really hard. But if do, you can find it.”

Chef Roger is aware of the reputation that the campus food service used to have. “The food just wasn’t as fresh in the past,” he says. “But that’s no longer the case. With the improvements in our facilities and the emphasis on training and education that comes from Mark Ditman, Chef Ben, and the team they have put together, the passion and creativity of all the chefs and cooks here is able to come through.”