Students on the food advisory board at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, meet once a month to with the dining team to offer suggestions on how they can improve food offerings. At one of the meetings, they asked dining staff to come up with a more exciting curry dish than the traditional aloo potato curry that was being offered.
In response, Operations Chef Cris Williams devised a tomato-mushroom curry made with onion, garlic, coconut milk and a variety of herbs and Indian spices, served with lemon and mustard seed basmati rice. The curry is available on Indian Wednesdays at the school's vegan dining hall, where students are quick to tell dining staff when they notice the dish isn't available, chef and General Manager Matthew Ward says.
"If it's not on the menu on a particular week, we are flooded with comment card inquiring where the curry was," he says.