Thyme to Try Gallatin College’s Student Bistro

The tables were already crowded, a long waitlist of almost 45 minutes was queued and all around us, chefs-in-training rushed about: bussing tables, grabbing orders and refilling water. The lunch rush was picking up and they hadn’t even been open for a full hour. It was the Gallatin College Culinary program’s Student Bistro.

The Thyme Student Bistro is held in Hannon Hall every Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The menu is designed weekly and prepared by the student chefs in the culinary program at Gallatin College. They offer an entree, appetizers, specialty and non-specialty drinks, as well as dessert. The student chefs both prepare the meals and act as waitstaff. At $10 an entree, prices are relatively inexpensive and the menu seemed professionally designed. 

I picked up the menu and tried to decide if I was in the mood for chicken alfredo or red sauce and a meatball. Maybe I’d prefer the salad in a house vinaigrette over the minestrone soup. The decisions were made much easier after I got the green light from my managing editor and I got to say something I’ve wanted to say my entire life: “I’ll take one of everything.” 

With those five simple words I felt reborn and classy. I cradled the words in my mouth as the taste of affluence filled my cheeks and burned my throat. Our waiter wrote the words down and moved on.

The drinks showed up quickly. The coffee was strong and dark, the Italian soda was tangy with some raspberry mixed in and the sweet tea was actually just unsweetened tea served with sugar. I drank the unsweetened tea happily. The lemonade was both sour and sweet at odd intervals. 

We got our soup and salad promptly after ordering. The minestrone soup was good, if not to my personal taste. There were plenty of noodles and a good amount of carrots. It was seasoned well and had a rich flavor. I dug into the salad, which was refreshing and tangy with the balsamic vinaigrette. The appetizers prepared us well for the entrees ahead: homemade fettuccine with red sauce and meatball or chicken alfredo, both served with broccolini on the side. The only issue is that the rest of the food didn’t come for close to half an hour. 

However, it was understandable. The Thyme Bistro is a class, and the chefs and waiters are still students. The point of the Bistro is to provide the culinary students with actual restaurant experience and with how busy it was and the amount of tables they were serving — close to twenty of them — I could see how things got backed up. Morgan Demars, our waiter and a senior in the culinary program, even came by at one point to apologize for the wait. 

The atmosphere was pleasant and people were talking all around us. The natural light that came in from the windows splayed nicely around the room. Our food was plated well and once we started digging in, everything tasted scrumptious. The meatball was moist and well cooked, the red sauce had good flavor if not a little more reminiscent of grocery store sauce than I expected, and the homemade fettuccine was well-cooked with the sort of thick, long noodles that make eating pasta enjoyable. The alfredo sauce seemed to be the biggest hit. It was creamy and cheesy. The chicken, however, was cooked so thoroughly that salmonella never stood a chance. It reminded me of the dining hall chicken from freshman year. 

After I interviewed our server, I realized just how integral this class and experience is to the program. The students cook, prepare, study and are expected to run the show like a genuine restaurant. Demars usually works as a cook — at his day job and in the bistro — but that doesn’t mean the experience as a waiter wasn’t useful. Demars told me, “[As a learning experience] it’s really opened my perspective for front-of-house. I’ve always been in the kitchen so getting this somewhat training and practice to use in the real world is beneficial for my later-on experience.” 

Demars is set to be the chef of the week for the week of April 8. The chef of the week, a rotation of the student chefs in the program, is in charge of designing the menu — the food, costs and menu layout — as well as forecasting how many people to expect and how much to make based on those expectations. While the chefs are encouraged to pick a meal they’ve practiced a lot, Demars said, “We all kind of just wing it, [it] comes out great.” I look forward to seeing what he can do with this Friday’s entree of wine-braised beef short rib. 

The cost of the dishes goes back into the program and is part of how the students learn to budget ingredients and recipes. Any additional donations go into gift cards for the students’ finals where they try a professional restaurant and critique what was done well or could use work. So if you feel like having an inexpensive tasty meal, give the Thyme Bistro a try — and don’t forget to tip. The doors open at 11 a.m., and with nearly 100 people projected to show up, you’ll want to be the first one through the door.