Lemon Tree Café on UK campus provides learning experience for students

There’s a lunch spot on the University of Kentucky campus that you’ve probably never heard of, but you’ll have a hard time getting a reservation there.

Despite doing no advertising, serving only twice a week at noon sharp during the school year and having a take-it-or-leave-it menu, the place is regularly booked solid. And there is no parking to speak of.

Is it a trendy pop-up? Nope. It’s the Lemon Tree Café on the second floor of Erikson Hall, and it has been going strong for decades.

The working café is a classroom where students majoring in dietetic or hospitality management get real-world experience in every aspect of food production.

“I tell them this is your motivation for getting a good job — and I’m dead serious,” said chef Bob Perry, who coordinates the program along with Sandra Bastin. The café is the capstone course in quantity food production that students need to graduate. And it’s designed so the classes get to put lessons in the chemistry of cooking to practical application.

The students take turns at each job, from slicing to cooking to serving to washing dishes. Class begins at 9:30 a.m., and the three-course menu starts going on the tables at noon.

For many of the students, Perry said, it’s their first time working in food service.

“A lot of these students are right out of high school and most haven’t ever worked in a kitchen. Or at all,” Perry said. Their first time chopping up 50 pounds of potatoes is a real eye opener, he said.

Or washing all those dishes. But they have to do it only once, he said.

Perry, a chef for more than 25 years, shares his own experiences with them, too.

Such as? Treat your dishwasher well.

“If you make them mad, they’re not going to quit on a slow Tuesday,” he said. “They’re going to quit on a busy Friday.”

Perry’s goal for students, who probably will apply for their first jobs at nursing homes, hospitals, restaurants and hotels, is to understand “what it takes to produce food in quantity.”

They prepare for 50 diners, served banquet-style. Perry sets the menus for the café at the beginning of the semester, including perennial favorites including herb-crusted salmon.

The menus are emailed to the college deans and department chairs, then the faculty and then to the rest of the campus, who can request specific dates based on the menu that day.

“It’s not the food that I want to cook as a chef; it’s what serves the purpose and is doable for our students,” Perry said. “We only have 2 1/2 hours and we start from scratch. It’s a lot of food for a lunch.”

Offerings for this spring (which is already booked) included game hens in bourbon-cherry sauce, roasted pork loin in apple cranberry chutney, and the popular salmon.

“Usually within three days, we’re sold out for the whole semester,” Perry said.

Those in the know make it a point to sign up early. Mary Ann Chamberlain of Lexington said she comes “every chance.” The retired teacher began coming a few years ago and now she’s a regular.

“I think we got seven times this semester,” she said on a recent Thursday. “This is the best place in town. We take whatever we can get.”

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 11:57 AM with the headline "Lemon Tree Café on UK campus provides learning experience for students."