IBE Podcast

The podcast "Pardon Our Take" discusses how University of Iowa students can explore, appreciate, and strengthen their cultural awareness towards culinary diversity. They share their own experiences and interview guests who talk about their experiences with diverse cuisines on campus. The University of Iowa offers a variety of international food options in their dining halls, which has helped students broaden their cultural awareness. The guests also discuss the importance of trying new foods as a way to understand and appreciate different cultures. They believe that the university could do a better job promoting and showcasing these diverse culinary options. Overall, they emphasize the importance of being open-minded and stepping out of one's comfort zone to learn and connect with others. Hello, my name is Alex, and my groupmates, Kayden and Jacob, would like to welcome you to our podcast, Pardon Our Take. On today's episode, we're going to take a deep dive into the question of how can University of Iowa students explore, appreciate, and strengthen their cultural awareness towards culinary diversity while in college? We will do this by offering our own experiences as well as a few interviews from some amazing guests describing their own experiences with culinary diversity while being a Hawkeye. Before we get further on in our podcast, we thought it'd be a good idea to define culinary diversity for our viewers, just so there's no confusion and everyone knows what we're kind of talking about. So culinary diversity can mean a lot of things towards food. It can play a role in what you eat, the food from different cultures that you eat, how culinary diversity impacts your decision-making on what to eat, and we'll also talk about how the University of Iowa promotes and how they could do a better job in promoting different cultures and their cuisines. All right, we will now talk about our own experiences with food diversity while in college. Every member here is not from the same area, so they all will probably have a different viewpoint. So we'll just start off with Caden. So what's been your experience with food diversity while in college, and how has it changed since coming to Iowa? One thing I've noticed increases my cultural awareness through the food. Growing up, my exposure to different cuisines was pretty limited. Being from a small town in Iowa with a pretty white population, I was just used to the typical American bar and barbecue food scene, and those were the restaurants I had, and I didn't really venture much beyond that. But everything changed when I started attending the University of Iowa. I realized that this campus was a melting pot of cultures, and I realized that the dining options reflected that well. Every dining hall offered a stand of international options that would switch every day. Some days it was Chinese, other days it was Italian, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., and that's what really opened my eyes and piqued my interest in immersing myself into different cultures through food. Yeah, I would probably say the same thing. I did come from a town that's a little bigger, but it always felt like there's only like Mexican restaurants and just your typical bar food, and once I came down to the University of Iowa, you just walk downtown and you see all the different kinds of cuisines that are offered from like Asian restaurants, Japanese sushi restaurants, there's Irish pubs and stuff like that. To go along with like the Mexican food and like your American bar style food, it was pretty different coming down here and seeing all those, but Jacob, what about you? Yeah, I have pretty similar experiences with food in the dining halls, but also, you know, some of the restaurants downtown as well, but ultimately we chose food as our topic of discussion because we believe it's a huge aspect of culture, and immersing ourselves in different foods we don't normally eat is a great way to broaden our cultural awareness. In my experience at the University of Iowa, I've had the opportunity of trying multiple diverse cuisines at the dining halls my freshman year. My closest dining hall was Hillcrest, which offered a variety of different options in terms of ethnic foods. I also had the opportunity to interview one of my good friends, Sean, who has some insight on the topic of diverse cuisine being offered at the dining halls. Hello, my name is Sean Holmes. I am a current junior here at the University of Iowa, and in my past work experience, I have worked for two years at the Hillcrest dining hall. I've also taken up a variety of other student jobs on campus, which is via student custodial work and being a front desk worker at Reno, and I'm excited to answer your questions here today. Thank you, Sean. So my first question is, do you believe that exposure to diverse cuisines plays a role in students' appreciation for different cultures? I'd say so, but I'd argue that it's more important on campus rather than, per se, actually at the dining halls. While a lot of first impressions to more cultural foods are given at the dining halls, like we've had options for sushi, options for a burrito stand, options for many different types of foods that you really wouldn't usually see in Iowa, it opens the door for a lot of students to where it's like, okay, a year was pretty good, I'm going to go try one from one of the more authentic restaurants in Iowa City. A really good example is sometimes we've had things like Tiki Masala that have had kids want to go to, per se, India Cafe or Masala downtown, and those are very good restaurants, and there's a lot of very good cultural restaurants in the downtown Iowa City area. So it plays a very large role in helping these students, well, introduce to new foods, really. Thank you so much, Sean. My next question, Sean, have you noticed any particular trends among students when it comes to trying new or culturally diverse foods? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'd say it's pretty standard for most people to be a little reluctant to trying like very differing things than what they've had in the past. I mean, even in my own personal case, every child starts out as picky. You know, as a kid, I had trouble even eating pizza or burgers, but once I've came here and I've tried a lot of the new restaurants in town due to these options being in the dining halls, I thought, wow, this is really good. And I've seen that same kind of feeling replicated with a lot of students. I mean, there's kids that I also work with that make it on the shift, they pick up some of the food from the dining hall, and that they've really never tried before because it just sounded good, and they ended up liking it. I mean, I've gone with some of the other employees in terms of employee bonding, we've gone to a couple of restaurants in the past that have been more cultural or things that I wanted to try at home with my family, and it was overall a really good experience. But there's always going to be a little bit of hesitation when it first comes to picking up these new diverse foods, because you really don't know what to expect. But once you actually bridge the way over, it's very beneficial. That was a great interview, and we will get back more into that after the second interview that we have. And for our next guest, he is also a student at the University of Iowa, and he also happens to be my roommate. With me today is J.J. Woodman, a student here at the University of Iowa, and who also happens to be my roommate. J.J., how are we doing today? I'm having a great day so far. The weather is amazing, class went pretty well, so no complaints. How are you, Al? Not too bad. Good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here and allowing me to ask you a few questions about your experiences and thoughts around culinary diversity and its impact to strengthen cultural awareness in the University of Iowa students. Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. No problem. All right, let's dive right into it. So my first question for you is, do you believe that exposure to diverse cuisines play a role in other students or your self-appreciation for different cultures, and specifically at the University of Iowa? Totally. I do think exposure to diverse cuisines helps me appreciate other cultures more. Specifically, I like going to Burge Cafeteria and seeing their diverse food selection. It seems like they have everything to offer from around the world. And I enjoy sampling and trying different foods, absolutely. Yeah, I like Burge, too. They have a lot of different kinds of cuisines and foods from all sides of the world. Good selection. Yeah. Do you think that the University of Iowa does a good job promoting initiatives that embrace culinary diversity, and why or why not? That's a great question. I'm kind of split. I wouldn't say they do a tremendous job of promoting it with initiatives. However, they do have that wide variety of food. I think they could do a better job promoting it and exposing the selection. I think that could be a big draw for incoming freshmen at dorms. I think the food and cuisine could play a big role in their selection coming to Iowa. So yeah, that's how I feel. All right. Well, I just want to say thank you again for letting me interview you, and just thank you for giving me your thoughts about culinary diversity on the University of Iowa campus. Totally. Happy to do this. Those were great interviews with great insights, so shout out to those two for helping us out. Some insight I gained from both Sean and JJ was that these international options, they're out there, and they're out there for a reason. Even though the university and the restaurants around Iowa City, they might not necessarily do a great job at promoting these options, but they're definitely out there to find, whether it's the international station at each dining hall, or you can just walk up any block in Iowa City and you'll find a different cultural cuisine on almost anywhere. It's important to use these places as an opportunity not only to try new things, but give yourself an opportunity to emerge and learn about what these different cultures and cuisines are all about. Yeah, in my chat with Sean, we talked about how trying different foods and experiences can help us understand other cultures better. Sean pointed out that when we try new foods, we're also opening ourselves up to meeting new people and learning from them. He mentioned that trying new things isn't just about food, it's about broadening our horizons and becoming more understanding of others. Whether it's tasting a new dish or exploring a different cultural activity, stepping out of our comfort zones can make us more open-minded and connected to the world around us. Being open to new experiences can help us grow and become more culturally aware in general. So, things I took away from both of the interviews were that how Sean was talking about how when he got down to school, he really broadened his horizon, and he mentioned that everyone's pretty picky when they're growing up, and I can relate to that because I was very picky. And then once I came down to the University of Iowa with all the different choices of food, I got to try a lot of new things, and I come to enjoy them, actually. And then for JJ's interview, what brought to my attention was that he thought that the University of Iowa does a good job of having all these different kinds of food diversity and whatnot, but he said they don't do as good a job promoting as they could. He always felt like they didn't really promote their kind of foods, and that's kind of what our call to action is going to be. All right, so our call to action is going to be how University of Iowa could promote different culinary cuisines throughout campus on dining halls and such. And one thing that came to mind for me was maybe offering like a one free meal a week if you were to get food at the dining hall that's not typical United States culture. I think that will really help people be exposed to different kind of cultures and hopefully make them learn more about them. As I mentioned earlier, Iowa City is a melting pot. You might as well jump right in. Go out and try these new things, go learn about people, go learn about cuisines, and just broaden your horizons in any way you possibly can. All right, and that'll be it for our podcast today. We really appreciate everyone tuning in, and we hope that you guys can take something of value home with you today. And yeah, thank you very much.