Each year, hundreds of students, faculty, staff and their families join the festivity that is International Food Festival.
Tuesday night, the Grant Center and International Club hosted yet another wonderful IFF with the theme “East Meets West.” This year cooks prepared around 50 dishes from all around the world. Guests were invited to begin in lines marked by their different continents, picking up bite-sized flavors from various countries along the way.
Featured among those flavors was the salty and smoky taste of Zimbabwean barbeque, prepared by Ouachita’s own Tristan Benzon. A sophomore history and psychology double major, Benzon serves as the president of International Club. Benzon also helped plan and recruit for the event during the months leading up to it as Student Coordinator on the IFF planning committee, run by the evening’s main coordinator Sharon Cosh, ESL Coordinator for the Grant Center.
Benzon loves IFF and what it stands for.
“It’s a great time to show Ouachita, which is a wonderful place that has helped us so much, and it’s a great way to give back to the community just serving the foods we love.”
While guests may not have known these behind-the-scenes details of Benzon’s cooking and serving qualifications, they certainly couldn’t resist the popular dishes he cooked up and served.
“We bought biltong and we made some boerewors as well.”
Benzon described biltong as an African of beef jerky, a snack they enjoy in a similar way to the American version. They were able to purchase it in bulk from a South African store in America.
“Boerewors is like an African sausage, and we have it all the time at our barbeques which we call braii, like your American barbeques.”
Benzon said boerewors is quick to cook, and he grilled it and cut it up in 30 minutes before the food festival started. He served it with chutney, which is a common compliment to the dish.
“I just love boerewors because it reminds me of home. It reminds me especially of Sunday afternoon braiis by the pool with my family in the warm summer sun. Man, those are good memories,” Gail Lange-Smith, sophomore dietetics major and fellow Zimbabwean, said of the dish.
“Our food is almost our identity, so to speak, so this is a great way of showing what our country is like, where it’s from, the identities we have, “ Benzon said. “And every loves food, so it’s a great way of bringing communities and cultures together.”
Story by Rachel Wicker
Video by Nate Wallace
