SLO Eats

For 26 years, Debbie Duggan has been teaching residents of the greater San Luis Obispo area her secrets and tricks in the kitchen. Through her cooking classes and catering business, she has formed a community of friends, who have become family through the years. Central Coast Culinary offers multiple classes a month, each class being unique in theme and hosting up to 20 students. Throughout the three hour course, Duggan and her volunteer chefs prepare the courses and serve the students, and Duggan goes into detail about the recipe, how to properly cook it, and other notes she may have. “My volunteers really are the backbone of these classes,” Duggan says. “If it weren’t for them, I do not know how I would do it without them.” As Duggan prepares to hand over her cooking school and catering business to another chef in December, she takes advantage of the classes she has and enjoys them as much as she can. Check out our video about Duggan and her classes here !

When it comes to working in campus dining, putting the needs of students first is a priority for Cal Poly Partners, the organization that oversees all things dining. Russell Monteath, director of Commercial Services for Cal Poly Partners, emphasized the importance of putting students first in regards to their dining experience as first years. CL: What do you think are some of the biggest, challenges and things you have to deal with, day to day when it comes to dining halls and dining? RM: It’s just volume. I don't think people realize this, but, in a ranking of what we serve people, like how many coordinated people live on campus. We rival UCLA, USC. We are enormous in terms of a dining program. So, we have over 50 locations and we feed over 25,000 people a day. So if you can do the math, you know, 50 locations, 25,000 people, right now, 8,500 students who live on campus, 9,000 students that are on a meal plan. I wouldn't say the hardest, it's I just think, when I have a hi...