Feb. 09–The kitchen is bustling with dozens of white-aproned chefs preparing salad appetizers. At the front of house, managers tinker with place settings to ensure they are complete with red folded napkins, wine glasses and three sets of utensils.
All seems well for dinner, which is scheduled in an hour.
But this isn't a high-end restaurant on the Strip. In fact, it's miles away from the lights and crowds of casinos. This banquet-style meal is entirely student-run and housed at UNLV's business college.
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The dining event is part of a class in restaurant management. It's the brainchild of Mohsen Azizsoltani, a longtime hospitality management professor at UNLV who started the class last year. The focus is to teach students how to pair food with an appropriate wine while also helping them learn the key skills required to run a successful restaurant.
A team of about 30 students is responsible for planning and orchestrating about four meals during the semester. For each dinner, seven students are chosen as managers and are in charge of their classmates, who act as their employees.
"What gave me the idea is wine has become an important aspect of people's lives," Azizsoltani said. "Here (in the U.S.), we are seeing that wine is becoming important not only in your social life, but in food and beverage. If you want to be a food and beverage manager, you have to know about wines."
The students are not provided with any financial help from the college. Instead, their stream of revenue depends on how well they market the meal. The more tickets they sell to the public, the more money they have to organize the dinner. For tonight's meal, tickets are $30 each that includes one appetizer, two main courses — teriyaki salmon and rosemary chicken — and dessert. Students publicize the meal through word of mouth to friends and family members, and through websites created by each class.
It's a challenge, but Azizsoltani says learning how to budget is a skill the students will have to master if they are to enter the hospitality industry.
On top of that, students are graded on menu design, food preparation, decoration and how well wines go with the food — and those are only some of the benchmarks that they have to meet in a long list of criteria.
"They need to have the knowledge (and skills) of restaurant management," Azizsoltani said. "They have to be hardworking and ready for long hours. They have to have a lot of patience."
—-It's an hour into service, and the students already have learned one important lesson: preparing for the unknown.
Cobb salads are served, but some of them are returned because guests are allergic to their ingredients. It's a situation the students did not expect. One flustered chef says the staff made a mistake by making enough salads to serve every guest, which exhausted the supply of ingredients. Had some of the salad fixings been set aside, she says, the staff could have used them to make special appetizers for those suffering allergies.
But the students have to move past their mistake. The first entree, teriyaki salmon, zips out of the kitchen.
Despite the hiccup, guests seem pleased, and the room is buzzing with conversation and laughter.
Near the bar, Azizsoltani keeps a sharp eye on the managers and employees. One bartender is missing.
"I had to send a student home," Azizsoltani says. "She was on her cellphone in front of the guests."
The student will get a "zero" grade for the night.
"One of the things I teach these students is discipline. I rather she learn that here than out there," he says, referring to the professional dining market.
He pulls a student aside.
"I told you to talk to the guests," he said.
The student nods, walks to one of the tables and shyly introduces himself. It's an example of how the students also have to overcome fear of interaction. Guests like to be noticed, Azizsoltani says.
—-Andre Teixeira remembers well the hospitality management classes he took at UNLV. Even though the restaurant management course did not exist at the time, the lessons he took were very similar. His class also was responsible for putting on meals.
"It's a very important class," Teixeira said. "Knowing the basics of service is key."
Today, he's the beverage director at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. What he learned at UNLV, he still uses to please his clientele.
"What always stuck with me is you have to have passion for the business," Teixeira said. "You have to be able to adapt to change."
He also stresses the overwhelming competition in Las Vegas.
"We're the mecca of restaurants here," he said. "You have to be different."
Another witness to the UNLV senior class program is LeRoy Godfrey, operating partner of Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar at Town Square. He is a member of a mentorship program at the hotel college and has sat in on the class.
"I'm very impressed with the program," Godfrey said. "I had the opportunity to watch the students participate in an active way."
Godfrey has worked in the restaurant industry since he was a teenager and has stressed to the UNLV hospitality hopefuls the importance of being levelheaded.
"If you have patience, you'll be fine," he said. "There are things that will happen that are out of your control, and you have to learn to deal with it and move on."
Since their teen years, Godfrey and Teixeira have faced changes in the hospitality business, including the introduction of social media, an aspect of the profession Azizsoltani's students have to constantly keep in mind.
"Now in five seconds, hundreds of thousands of people can see what you've done," Azizsoltani said. "You can't take a chance. … There's always a way to make your guest happy. You always say 'yes.' "
What Godfrey and Teixeira do to avoid a bad review on sites like Yelp is one of the rules Azizsoltani stresses to his students: Never let a guest leave upset.
"At the end of the day, those who voice their opinions on social media are passionate about their experience," Teixeira said. "As an operator, the best way to stop that from happening is to care. … You have to resolve it."
Godfrey has ensured that to avoid any negative reviews, his employees and he must make each guest's experience personal.
"If a guest writes a negative comment, I'll take it as a learning opportunity," he said. "Then I'll reach out to that guest. If they come back again, I make sure I shake their hand and go from there."
—-The guests marvel at the strawberry shortcakes set on their tables. While they dig their spoons into the dessert, waiters walk around with comment cards.
Nick Rosenberg, one of the managers chosen for this dinner, can only hope that the hours the management team and he have dedicated to it have paid off.
Whatever the guests write on the cards, he says he is grateful for what he's gleaned from the evening.
"You learn more about experience in this class," Rosenberg said. "We basically do it from the ground up."
One of the chefs anxiously peers out of the kitchen and approaches Azizsoltani, who is watching closely as the students wash hundreds of plates and hang dry cooking pans.
"How was the chicken? Did they like the chicken?" the chef asks.
"They loved the chicken," Azizsoltani says.
