4B — Thursday, April 6, 2017
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

As inspiring as the 
perfect kiss scene 

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Still from Bridget Jone’s Diary

A look at food & chocolate in the most notable romantic comedies 

“What originally turned you 

on to cooking?”

“Fire.”
And 
so 
answered 
Chef 

Roger Urso, owner of the 
company Food and Logic, chef 
for multiple organizations on 
campus including fraternity 
Sigma Chi, where his kitchen 
is based, and Lamda Chi. And 
what’s more, he’ll cook for 
you. 
Banquets, 
luncheons, 

individual meals — Urso is the 
cook for hundreds of students 
across campus, and he’s only 
one man with a sous-chef.

“I used to wash dishes at 

Ernesto’s in Plymouth … you 
see (the cooks) hitting the 
shit with whiskey and wine 
and fire. I was like ‘I want to 
do that!’ So I spent my lunch 
hour, every day, learning how 
to cook.”

So he learned. At the age 

of 14, Urso started to cook. 
Pre-internet 
and 
pre-tidily 

packaged 
Tasty 
Facebook 

videos, 
Urso 
learned 
by 

watching and repeating. Years 
after that, he ended up in 
the hotel business, catering 
banquets and events. And after 
that, he ended up in Ann Arbor 
by way of a Craigslist ad.

Ten years later, after moving 

from one business to starting 
his own, Urso has cooked for 
countless 
fraternities 
and 

other organizations on campus, 
making 
name 
for 
himself 

because 
of 
his 
company’s 

defining tenets — affordability 
and efficiency.

“We’re 
about 
$40,000 

more reasonably priced than 
anywhere else on campus,” 
Urso said. “It’s about seventeen 
to eighteen hundred dollars per 
semester to eat at dining halls, 
and I’m seventeen thousand 
for two semesters. And you get 
scratch cooked food.”

Because after ten years, Urso 

has seen what other kitchens 
on 
campus 
offer 
and 
has 

decided what he can change. 
As a man dedicated to food and 
the communities he serves, he 
trades a little less money for a 
little more love. As he puts it: 
“We’re not greedy.”

The “we” he’s talking about 

is him and his sous-chef Eddie, 
who was chopping, cooking 
and moving chicken during 
my entire time in the kitchen, 
located at the back of Sigma 
Chi’s house on State Street. The 
lunch he was was preparing? 
Chicken and waffles, with fresh 
fruit — watermelon, cantaloupe, 
pineapple — on the side.

“We focus heavy on meat, 

and 
for 
vegetarians 
we’ll 

focus on ruffage, vegetables, 
fruits … we’ll always have a 
complex carbohydrate, nothing 
saturated in butters and fats, 

and we’ll always have lean 
proteins,” Urso added. “We 
always try to stay more towards 
not flour tortilla, but more 
corn.”

Urso is cognizant of dietary 

needs 
as 
well 
as 
varying 

diets. 
Gluten-free, 
dairy-

free, vegetarian, vegan — all 
considered, 
respected 
and 

taken care of by handy hot 
boxes. He doesn’t buy from 
massive companies or multi-
purpose facilities. He gets up 
every morning and makes trips 
to Meijer, Trader Joe’s, Whole 
Foods and Gordon, gets to the 
kitchen at eight, and leaves at 
six.

“We buy our food daily, 

and we don’t do trucks. I had 
someone deliver 700 pounds of 
bad chicken and it was frozen,” 
Urso said. “Any time you get 

that type of food in, you still 
have to look at it, you have to 
chop into it and smell it because 
could 
you 
imagine 
getting 

stuck with 700 pounds of bad 
chicken?”

But it goes further than that. 

When tending to dietary needs, 
it could be as simple as making 
pesto that substitutes sunflower 
seeds for nuts. And then even 
making sure the sunflower 
seeds weren’t processed in a 
facility that processes nuts, and 
so on, and so on.

Even then, healthy eating can 

go so far. In his drastically and 
noticeably cheaper meal plans 
for students, Urso offers two 
choices: organic or not. Most of 
the time, the answer is not.

“You give the house an option 

… do you want to go GMO, do you 
want everything to be organic, 
do you want your beef and your 
chicken grassfed, free-ranged?” 
Urso said. “Then you show 
them the price difference and 
none of them really want to go 
organic. It’s expensive.”

As a result, Urso focuses on 

the positives and the potential 
— the healthy eating that can 
emerge even when GMO’s are 
in play and grass-fed is traded 
for facility-fed, and the savings 
that can still occur in that 
compromise.

“It’s the parent’s money, and 

you have social budgets,” Urso 

said. “If we can save you 35 to 
40 thousands dollars in eight 
months, what can you do with 
that money?”

Urso’s 
ability 
to 
balance 

affordability and quality is 
valuable when it comes to cost-
cutting techniques. Although 
he loves Greek life, the people 
he cooks for and the vast 
community he’s created that 
stretches across campus, he 
repeatedly emphasizes the need 
to remain “separate,” but also 
in the know when it comes to 
money and finance security.

“We go through about five 

thousand pounds of meat a 
month. But you have to know 
how to buy it, and you have 
to buy it in bulk. So you have 
to have a good relationship 
with your treasurer, and you 
have to know that the money’s 
there, and when the money’s 
going to be running out,” Urso 
said. “We have to set the right 
expectations like ‘Hey for seven 
months you guys are going to 
eat like kings, and then we’re 
going to dip off in the last 
month.’”

Overall, the people he cooks 

for do eat like kings because 
despite being aware of dietary 
and health concerns, Urso isn’t 
ever limited in trying out dishes 
— as long as they’re not too out 
there. Russian, Korean, Italian, 
Greek 
to 
stuffed 
chicken 

parmesan 
and 
goat 
cheese 

mashed potatoes, nothing is 
a little too out there, except 
vegetable stir fry — the clients 
weren’t a fan.

All in all, Urso goes through 

about five thousand pounds of 
meat, one thousand eggs and 15 
pounds of coffee all in a month. 
And this isn’t a mere estimate 
— 
each 
summer 
break 
he 

spends running and planning. 
Running, so he can “workout, 
get healthy … when I come back 
I can get fat again and off we 
go.” Planning, because he can 
write eight months of menus 
during the summer; each meal 
needs to be planned down to 
the spice.

Urso said one word he would 

use to describe his kitchen is 
“efficient” but in comparison 
to other kitchens on campus, 
including 
dining 
halls, 
his 

stands 
out 
as 
more 
than 

efficient. They seem better, 
healthier. So I told him this.

“This is better eating than 

most of the University offers,” 
I said.

“Yeah because what causes 

cancer? Food,” Urso responded.

“Look at agriculture, right, 

how does it start? … Monsanto, 
they genetically modify seeds 
… they go to other plants that 
have natural pesticides and 
herbicides in them already and 
then they splice it and they take 
the DNA and they marry it with 
another seed,” Urso explained. 
“They grow a whole crop of 

DOMINIC POLSINELLI/THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Chef Roger Urso in his kitchen at Sigma Chi Fraternity
Chef Roger Urso brings 
flare to college kitchens

Allow me to the set the scene. 

Katz’s Deli is filled with diners 
enjoying their corned beef and 
pickles, sipping on Coca-Cola 
and discussing 80’s politics 
in heavy New York accents. 
The busy diner quiets down 
to an astonished hush as Meg 
Ryan’s Sally loudly re-enacts 
her bedroom noises for all to 
witness. Mouths drop, men 
smile, and that famous line 
is said with perfect comedic 
timing and delivery: “I’ll have 
what she’s having.” Thank you, 
Nora Ephron, thank you.

From “When Harry Met 

Sally” to “Bridget Jones” to 
“Pretty Woman” to “Clueless,” 
food plays a defining role in 
establishing the relationships 
between 
characters 
and 

creating a timeline from first-
date jitters to the breakup 
blues, from hot and heavy to 
sad and weepy, food can create 
romance and heartbreak in a 
film.

I am not talking about 

those 
food-centered 
rom-

coms 
(As 
in 
“Julie 
and 

Julia,” “Waitress” and “No 
Reservations”), I am talking 
about your run of the mill 
romantic comedy. The ones 
probably featuring Katherine 
Heigl 
or 
Julia 
Roberts, 

depending on the decade, and 
most likely Hugh Grant or 
a younger replacement. The 
same basic structure exists 
throughout these kind of films 
surrounding food: First it’s 
the cute coffee date, followed 
by their first dinner together 
at a fancy restaurant (French 
or Italian), then comes the 
happy, dating montage which 
includes eating pizza while 
walking down the sidewalk at 
night, playfully feeding each 

other cotton candy on the pier, 
seductively baking brownies, 
tossing popcorn at the movies, 
etc.

This montage is usually 

succeeded by the breakup 
scene, which can differ slightly 
based on the tone of the movie 
–– usually it has to do with 
another woman, a lie gone too 
far, or the female lead must 
choose between her success or 
her love life. The breakup scene 
invariably results in the post-
breakup scene in which the 
female character can be found 
helplessly binge-eating junk 
food on the couch watching 
a sappy movie surrounded by 
candy wrappers, tissues and 
empty 
wine 
bottles. 
After 

the post-breakup scene, the 
characters typically get back 
together and live happily ever 
after ... wedding cake anyone?

Think of “Lady and the 

Tramp,” where that spaghetti 
scene has inspired many brave 
couples to try pasta kisses all 
over the world. How about 
Elle Woods stuffing her face 
with chocolate in “Legally 
Blonde” after Warner breaks 
up with her, a pathetically 
honest reaction to a bad split? 
Look at the evident romance 
and sexual tension in “Pretty 
Woman” as Richard Gere offers 
Julia Roberts a strawberry 
with her champagne. Did you 
ever notice in “Clueless” how 
Alicia Silverstone’s Cher and 
Paul Rudd’s Josh flirted over 
carrot sticks and pretzels on 
the couch? Is it a coincidence 
that 
their 
transition 
from 

sorta-siblings to full on lovers 
is told through their snacking 
habits? I think not. All of these 
scenes provide the viewer 
with an incredible amount 
of insight into the state of 
the relationship. Whether a 
prelude to a steamy sex scene 
or a mascara covered pillow 

and takeout for one, food in 
rom-coms plays a more crucial 
role than you may think.

Post-breakup 
scenes 

in 
romantic 
comedies 
are 

notorious for their use of 
chocolate 
and 
ice 
cream 

to define the sad woman’s 
state of mind. Put aside the 
portrayal of women as weak 
and helpless after a man 
breaks up with them, that’s an 
entirely different article. Still, 
the female lead tends to turn 
to food in times of romantic 
uncertainty or hardship.

The queen of rom-coms 

herself, her majesty Bridget 
Jones 
said 
it 
best: 
“I’m 

enjoying a relationship with 
two men simultaneously. The 
first is called Ben, the other, 
Jerry.” Ice cream, chocolate, 
Doritos, Chinese food, and 
now I’m getting hungry. Junk 
food is always there for our 
lonely heroines even when men 
are not. After all, “If someone 
breaks your heart , punch 
them in the face , seriously 
punch them in the face and go 
get some ice cream.” Thank 
you, Frank Ocean, thank you.

Food 
is 
as 
crucial 
an 

element in romantic comedies 
as 
any 
Beach 
Boys 
song 

or 
promoting 
unrealistic 

expectations of love. Through 
food, we can better grasp 
the 
foundation 
on 
which 

the 
characters 
build 
their 

relationship. Friends do not 
share milkshakes, friends do 
not feed each other chocolate 
covered strawberries. There 
is 
something 
informative, 

and 
sometimes 
sensual, 

about 
the 
way 
we 
view 

food, especially within the 
framework of relationships. By 
looking at romantic comedies 
through a food lens, we can 
better understand the way 
relationships 
develop 
on 

screen.

NATALIE ZAK

Managing Arts Editor

CHEF PROFILE
FILM NOTEBOOK

BECKY PORTMAN

Daily Arts Writer

Sigma Chi chef Roger Urso talks efficiency, affordability, 
and health when it comes to starting and running a kitchen

that … Every third stage, they 
treat the soil with roundup, 
then they plant the seed, and 
that seed can (now) resist the 
poison, so it starts to grow. 
Soon as it sprouts, they spray 
the field with roundup. Three 
months later, they spray it, with 
roundup. Twenty days later 
they spray it, with roundup. Ten 
days later they harvest it.”

“Then they take it and feed it 

to pigs and cows and chickens, 
and now where’s the poison, 
it’s in them,” Urso continued. 
“And then where’s the poison? 
You buy it at the store. And then 
where is it? It’s in your body.”

So 
how 
do 
you 
avoid 

consuming pesticides and other 

harmful, over-processed goods?

“You 
can’t,” 
Urso 
said. 

Despite 
doing 
his 
best 
to 

ensure the meals he serves are 
low in sodium and full of the 
appropriate nutrients, when it 
comes down to us, he can only 
do his best for the people he 
serves, as well as for his own 
health and family.

“It’s (the poison) not going 

anywhere; 
it’s 
never 
going 

anywhere.”

But that doesn’t stop him 

from trying his best. He has 
a monopoly on loyalty at the 
University; this can be plainly 
seen in the wall that decorates 
his storage closet in his kitchen. 
It is covered in selfies and 

snapshots of meals he has 
served and people he has met. 
After ten years he knows that 
if any other company were to 
come knocking on the houses he 
serves, promising better prices, 
better meals, that they would be 
sent away.

It’s because of this loyalty 

that he doesn’t knock on other 
people’s doors, he just waits 
for them to come to him. But 
that doesn’t mean Urso isn’t 
expanding: not physically, but 
digitally.

“We have 32 shows in edit 

right now,” Urso explained. 
“We have a cooking show that 
we’re going to let rip soon. It’s 
called ‘Let’s Fucking Cook.’”

Urso offers two 
choices: organic 
or not. Most of the 
time, the answer 

is not.

