Students enjoy a traditional French meal at the BU Global House prepared by classmates in French Arts and Society (LF307). Photos by Ajani Hickling

Classes

From Classroom to Kitchen: An Unconventional Approach to Finals

These French language learners dish up a feast in place of taking a final

Silverware clatters, paring knives slice, and dishes pile up in the sink as a team rushes around a cramped kitchen. There’s only an hour before they must serve the meal they’re preparing—and face a critique from their peers.

 No, this isn’t a new cooking show on Netflix. These are Boston University undergrads in French Arts and Society (LF307), and they are completing their final exam: planning and cooking a dinner for 12, with a $200 budget.

Maria Bobroff, a College of Arts & Sciences senior lecturer in French, says she designed the course as an interesting and approachable way for students at the end of their CAS language requirement to understand the food culture in France.

“It’s not just looking at the food once it’s sitting on our table and we consume it, but everything that goes into that,” Bobroff says. “Where it’s coming from, who is producing it, and what are the ethics behind how it’s getting there.”

For the final project, Bobroff assigns students to one of three groups of four or five classmates and gives them just over a month to plan a themed three-course meal. Each of the three groups has three hours to prepare and plate their meal; another group attends the dinner as “critics.” Bobroff says a few slots are open for students not in the course to attend each dinner.

“It’s fun to put what we’re learning in class to something more active in real life,” says Laura Dodd (CAS’25), one of the students in the class. 

While Bobroff has taught this unorthodox assignment before, at a small liberal arts school in North Carolina, this is the first time she has done so at BU. “At that school, when I did it, the students came to my house and did the cooking in my kitchen,” Bobroff says. “That’s just not feasible here.”

The dinners were held on three different days. Students cooked the meals in the BU Global House kitchen and served their guests in the lower level lounge, a room decorated with flags and other cultural memorabilia.

Lillie Webb, Global House director, works with faculty like Bobroff to facilitate language class assignments, in addition to hosting cooking workshops and various weekly cultural events in Global House, at 610 Beacon Street.

“Almost all the events in Global House are student-initiated; my goal is to support them,” Webb says. “Global House works with student language clusters in building a cohesive multilingual, multicultural community. The goal is never perfection, but effort.” 

Bobroff says students had creative freedom in picking their dinner themes. One group took the farm-to-table approach, using locally sourced produce. Another group’s “Down with the Bourgeoisie” theme centered on once inexpensive “peasantry” food—like ratatouille—that was taken over and elevated by the bourgeoisie. 

Laura Dodd (CAS’25), Mia Popovic (CAS’27), Michael Sommese (COM’25), and Dorsa Hajmaghani (Pardee’27) decided their dinner would feature foods from the Rhône-Alpes, a region of southeastern France known for its cheese, walnuts, lentils, and a potato gratin dish called tartiflette. 

The group’s menu consists of an appetizer of potato leek soup and bread, an entrée of tartiflette—sliced potatoes, onions, and two types of cheese baked in a deep dish—a salad, and a dessert of cored apples filled with brown sugar and butter served with ice cream. 

“We tried to stick to basic ingredients, things that don’t take long to prepare, and are unique to the region,” Popovic says. With a $200 budget and dietary restrictions to keep in mind, the group opted for a meatless meal and inexpensive bulk items like potatoes and apples. They spent $184.

On this day, Bobroff and Webb hurry around the kitchen, helping to dice ingredients and prepare place settings, while conversing with students in French. Bobroff says she told students to “expect the unexpected.”

“Something is going to go wrong, something will happen, something will break, someone will spill something,” she says. “Part of the evaluation is going with the flow and making do with whatever comes their way.”

Hajmaghani says she has limited experience in the kitchen, but sees the assignment as good practice. “I got a knife stuck in an apple trying to core it,” she says. “This is very different from the rest of my classes. I’m still doing work, but it’s a break.” 

Dodd and Hajmaghani are the only members of their group invited to another dinner as critics before preparing their own. Dodd was “honestly surprised by how well it turned out,” she says of the meal she was asked to critique, and from Hajmaghani: experiencing the curated “restaurant feel” gave her a better idea of what to expect for her group’s dinner.

With 30 minutes to service, the group transfers meals to serving platters, pops potatoes into the oven for last-minute baking, and washes many, many dishes. After multiple trips to the table with hot dishes, they are ready to present and serve their dinner.

Seated at a long table in the lounge are five of the course members, discussing class assignments as the cooking group pours water. Surprise guests—two student residents of Global House—join them a few moments later. The cooking group explains, in French and then English, their dinner theme, as well as each course and its ingredients, before dishing out the appetizer. 

“It’s so fun to be outside the classroom,” says Arianna Acosta (CAS’26), one of the critics for the evening. 

French music fills the air as the students break bread and sip soup, with guests getting up several times for extra portions. They discuss their different cultural backgrounds and thoughts on the food as each course is served. 

“It’s really interesting to see what people come up with for food and presentation,” says Fernanda Zambrana (CAS’28), who had served her dinner for the class two days before.

Bobroff says it’s unclear where funding will take her dinner project in the future. She hopes to collaborate in the fall with a colleague who teaches a similar course, but in German. 

“Whether we end up doing a series of cooking workshops or a full dinner project is to be seen,” she says.