Tufts Blogs

"Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious."  - Ruth Reichl

Whenever I’m giving a tour, as I’m approaching Dewick, I always tell my group, “People at Tufts love to eat. Wherever there’s an event, there’s also food, and we know how to find good food; be it a late-night $3 slice of pizza or a fancy steak dinner.” 

This is indeed true, and from this food-loving student body, a Culinary Society emerged as a small student organization in 2008, with the aim of “helping to make culinary arts accessible to Tufts University.” Now, with more than a thousand members lead by an executive board of twelve (currently 9, 3 to be selected soon) people, Tufts Culinary Society is the biggest food group on campus, organizing all kinds of food related events such as but not limited to:

• Taza Chocolate Factory Tour

• Sushi Making Workshop

• Miracle Berry Tasting

• Fall Culture Crawl (a huge food fair with tables of different cultural clubs on campus – you get to taste food from all around the world!)

• Talks by chefs from around Boston

• Themed dinners, once every semester (One from last year was called “Fancy with Fromage")

• Its own live recording of the #1 food podcast on iTunes, the Sporkful, which is coming up in the next month!

(Photos from our previous events. Photo courtesy of the Tufts Culinary Society.)

As a foodie myself who loves to cook, eat and talk about food, shortly after coming to Tufts, I decided to apply, and got accepted to the executive board of this heavenly club as the Social Media Chair. Looking back after exactly one year, I can say that this was one of the best decisions I ever made at Tufts. The people at the Culinary Society are now among my closest friends, and it’s always a pleasure to work with them. As a group of people with a diverse range of interests, majors and activities, coming from different backgrounds, we may not look similar at the first glance. But we all share one great passion: food. And this never fails to bring us together.

To be more specific, we have a huge shared list of great food places in and around Boston that we want to try, and once in a while, we pick one and take a “TCS Executive Board Bonding” trip there. Our first bonding of the school year was a visit to the famous bagel shop Bagelsaurus near Porter Square. 

(Photo courtesy of Stina Stannik)

Early Saturday morning, we biked there and waited in line in front of the tiny bagel shop for about 20 minutes, chatting all the time. Finally, the time came for us to get our bagels, and we each got a different one to eat sitting down on the stairs right across the street. I got a Hot Smoked everything bagel with smoked salmon, cream cheese, pickled red cabbage, fresh dill and red onions. Allie got a Classic Jumbo bagel with fried eggs, mustard butter and sharp cheddar. Gabi got a honey rosemary cream cheese sea salt bagel. Stina got an Eggspañola sea salt bagel with fried eggs, feta, pimenton aioli and parsley. Fancy, right?

(Some of our bagels. Photo courtesy of Stina Stannik, Allie Wainer, Sunny Wang, Ipek Emekli.)

The bagels were AMAZING. We all fell silent after taking our first bites, devouring the sandwiches we were holding in our hands. After the initial fascination slightly faded away, we began chatting once again. We each offered the others a taste of our own bagel. We talked about other cafes and restaurants we wanted to try and made ourselves hungry while actually eating (happens very frequently among us.) We talked about our interesting classes, overwhelming homework and projects. We talked about the places we’ve seen around the world, and the places we wanted to visit.

Yes, the bagels were deliciously scrumptious. But as I biked back to my house, I realized that my Hot Smoked would have been nothing but a bland piece of bread with some toppings if it hadn’t been for my amazing friends. Once again, I realized how lucky I am to be a Jumbo, (more specifically a foodie Jumbo) and to have ended up exactly among people I wanted to, doing exactly what I wanted to do, both academically and recreationally. Here’s to another delightful year of delicious times, appetizing friendships and delectable discoveries.