Takis
Melissa Du
I won’t pretend like my memory is sharp enough to remember all the details of that fateful day. But there’s a high probability it went something like this:
It was about a month out from the end of the school year. Sophia and I were both in the kitchen, me dumping frozen dumplings into boiling water, Sophia concocting the sauce for her signature peanut noodles. I was probably hoping she would offer me some.
Figure 1. Sophia’s peanut noodles that she did eventually offer me <3
At one point, she turned around:“Melissa! I know you mentioned that you wanted to start a food truck at some point.” (I had mentioned that I wanted to start a food truck in the same way that I want to be a monk, an actress, an FBI agent, and a flight attendant, but I took her enthusiasm in stride.)
“I was thinking of creating a club at MIT that hosts like fine-dining restaurant pop-ups every month or so with custom-student-made menus. We would probably make it super affordable–maybe $15-$18 for the meal?–and have it at a different venue each time, kind of like SoFarSounds! Are you interested in joining to help out the logistical side?”
I loved the concept and enthusiastically agreed. I didn’t bother considering time commitment or my qualifications (I like to eat and used to cook a lot at home!) because I thought I was joining this project in the same way that I was going to live in a monastery for a year. As in, it’s something I would love to do if it weren’t for MIT and classes and social life and psets and all of My Other ObligationsTM.
I should have realized that at East Campus, ideas do not come after all of My Other Obligations. They show up at my dormstep like a fresh bag of Takis. Irresistible, spicy, and demanding, but so incredibly rewarding.
For the rest of the school year, Sophia was hard at work outsourcing talent and recruiting the original team. The same week she talked to me, she also had a meeting with the prodigious Jacky Chen, a self-taught master of fine-dining who’s built a reputation within MIT through his Instagram (@thefrenchdormitory) and guest appearances on MIT blogs.
It wasn’t until the start of the summer that I met our official founding team.
Angela Zhang ‘24: Soft-spoken but extremely kind and enormously talented in design. Seriously. Like I could give her any word or prompt and she could create something beautiful and clever out of it. Has incredible artistic vision. Architecture minor and doing physical work this summer. Her brain deserves to be framed, or displayed in a museum, or stored in the brain hall of fame, or something.
Figure 2. Angela’s Facebook profile picture from 1/29/17 (I did in fact stalk her for this. Sorry.)
Andrea Garcia ‘23: One of the first people that made me feel welcome at East Campus. Incredibly caring, and supportive. Extremely skilled at community-building and forming meaningful connections with other people. Can always be relied on as a nonjudgmental listener. Unafraid to give valuable and honest feedback. Working at Google this summer. Gives the best hugs.
Figure 3. Andrea in London!!! That is a sliver of Sophia’s hair you see on the left there and me on the far left, out of frame 🤩
Sophia Wang ‘24: Our fearless leader and the mastermind behind it all. Super passionate and hard-working, but also cares a lot about her friends. Talented home cook. Working at a high-end restaurant this summer in addition to an aerospace job. Genuinely one of the most interesting and inspiring people I’ve ever met.
Figure 4. Sophia being a #chef (and stealing a bunch of recipes) at a really nice restaurant in LA! I am so proud.
Over the next few weeks, we brought Sophia’s brain-child to life, naming ourselves The Monthly Palate just in time to send out our first dormspam email. Bridging a 15-hour time zone difference, we met with applicants, kitchen coordinators, and potential sponsors.
Figure 5. Angela’s incredible designs for The Monthly Palate. Do you SEE the egg that also looks like a paint palette it exploits the fact that they are homonyms and gently reminds us that cooking is also a form of art
I first saw Sophia’s business side spring to life during recruitment, as she repeatedly delivered our curated pitch and walked the applicant through logistical questions.
“I think we can all agree that cooking is not just an art form but a very humble means of connection. I’m sure you’ve experienced bonding with loved ones over a meal.”
“That’s it for all the boring logistical questions from me. Since you expressed interest in the business side, I’ll turn it over to Andrea and Melissa, since they are much more familiar with it than me!”
“Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to meet with us. We want to be respectful of your time, and it looks like we’re creeping up on the 15 minute mark.”
She always spoke with a warm smile and earnest enthusiasm. Friendly and welcoming, but still professional. Casual and personalized, but still composed. There was no awkward start or end to the zoom call, and she always left ample room for the rest of us to interject. I certainly wasn’t “much more familiar” with the business side, but Sophia was good at delegating responsibility, seeking out each of our inputs, and ensuring collective decision-making.
“There’s no I in team, Melissa!” she would joke whenever I commented on her natural leadership.
Figure 6.
I won’t lie. I may have tuned out a few times during Sophia’s speech, but thankfully, the experiences and talents of the people we talked to were less repetitive. There were bright-eyed prefrosh with no clue what they were getting entangled into and veteran seniors who simply wanted to enjoy their final year at MIT; fine dining connoisseurs who’d experienced world-class restaurants and home-cooks with skills honed over years of nourishing their loved ones; creative writers and Instagram influencers, as well as food scientists that applied an equally analytical approach to MIT classes and making the perfect ice cream.
They were all eager to be a part of our mission, and for that, we were deeply honored. We also ended up severely overstaffed. But more on that later.
Thanks to Sophia’s Yale *connections*, we also managed to schedule a meeting with Y Pop Up, a club run by Yale undergraduates that hosts bi-weekly fine-dining events. Although Sophia had conceived of the idea for The Monthly Palate independently, Y Pop Up is doing something similar, and has been running successfully since 2009. Rhea Cong, member of Y-Pop Up’s Cook Team, and James Han, Co-President and Head Chef, were delighted by our interest and readily disclosed all of their club’s secrets.
Apparently, Y Pop Up had started off as a single person paying out-of-pocket and serving 20-30 people each month, but evolved over the course of over a decade to accommodate around 80 people every other week. Nowadays, they release the themes and menus in advance and curate the recipes over hours of testing (or sometimes, they admitted, on the fly). Besides “formals”, which are tighter knit gatherings of Y Pop Up’s acquaintances, and “Pop Downs”, where they serve foods like burgers and tacos on a first-come-first-serve basis, tickets for events are lotteried out the week prior.
“Don’t take the roadblocks too seriously.” Rhea had said. “Once, a couple of our members had to drive like four hours to pick up some ingredients because they weren’t delivered on time.”
“Yup. It’s always a little bit of a shitshow, but it always works out, and it’s always worth it.”
Hearing about Y Pop Up’s 20+ member team serving 80 people biweekly made us a little concerned about the projected scale of our own operation, which was to serve 15-20 covers once a month. With a similar sized team but far less responsibility, we would constantly be running over one another, both in the kitchen and the ideation process.
This warranted a major restructuring of the team. And more importantly, a name change.
A few days of meetings later, we decided on splitting the team in half each month and serving two Pop-Ups in the third and fourth weeks. We also rebranded to MINCE, or the Massachusetts Institute of Culinary Experiences, but not before laying to rest a few names that I was quite attached to. I’ll list them out here for future reference in case I or any of you end up starting a restaurant.
Palet al. or Food et al. (kind of like Noodles and Co., has that MIT research edge but still simple and accessible)
Between Mouthfuls (insinuates that the food is so delicious you can’t help but eat it in large bites, but also highlights what is happening in the interim–the conversation!)
Take a Seat (menacing in a grandma who just spent hours cooking and is forcing you to eat her food despite you not being hungry yet kind of way)
Literally a 2x2 matrix with det() = FO-OD if you write it out (gives off IHTFP vibes)
Grazing into the Abyss (sounds a little depressing but also kind of poetic??)
Course Roads + FlavorHose
Figure 7. More of Angela’s beautiful brain children
Nowadays, we are desperately looking for funding and partnerships with people and organizations in the food industry, making our presence known in the MIT community (follow @mitmince on Instagram and TikTok!), and making preparations for the September pop-ups to be as successful as possible.
It seems crazy to think that summer might be ending soon, that MINCE members scattered across the globe will come together for the first time and all this planning will culminate into a physical event.
It brings me comfort to know that MINCE ties us together, even as we navigate our own hectic lives at MIT.
