At the beginning of this school year Mark McGranaghan '09 started a web log (blog) devoted to Bowdoin's culinary excellence. McGranaghan writes entries on everything from Thursday afternoon's "Baked Ziti and Chicken Florentine" to "How to eat a grapefruit." McGranaghan includes a number of mouth-watering photos on his site. He has recently been featured in local press, garnering the attention of the Portland Press Herald and New England Cable News (NECN). McGranaghan writes a weekly haiku about the food every Friday. His blog is updated often and can be found at www.bowdoingourmet.com.
The Orient sat down with the Bowdoin Gourmet to find out what prompted him to start his blog, what his favorite meals are, and whether he ever gets sick of college food. What follows are excerpts from the interview.
Bowdoin Orient: Looking at colleges, was the food at Bowdoin something that caught your eye?
Bowdoin Gourmet: I wasn't considering the food when I decided which school to go to.
BO: When you got here, what jumped out at you first in terms of food?
BG: The lobster bake was pretty special but the everyday quality of the food was most impressive?the pride that dining services took in their work everyday.
BO: What did you expect the response to your blog to be?
BG: I thought it would have some traction. This school is great platform for a food blog because it is consistently rated as having outstanding food. I also think there is a growing interest about food at colleges. I thought it was the right time at the right place [to start the blog].
BO: Do you have any disappointments with the foods here?
BG: I certainly, in my writing, focus more on positive things but, actually, I have had very few negative experiences at the dining hall?it's hard to when they offer so many choices.
BO: Do you keep track of your blog's readership?
BG: I do. It fluctuates: On a typical day it might get 50 or so unique visitors. After the article in the Portland Press Herald about the site, I got a couple hundred. It's been growing though, which is fun to watch.
BO: Do you have any experience with culinary writing?
BG: I had been reading a lot of food blogs on the internet, something I have enjoyed doing. I figured that I could do something like that here that would be interesting.
BO: What's your philosophy of writing?
BG: In my free time, I had the tendency to do a lot of reading and that is necessarily a passive activity. There's a lot to be said for writing and creating and taking the risk of putting yourself out there in terms of developing your thoughts and ideas.
BO: How have you found writing the blog to be?
BG: It certainly is challenging writing every day to, potentially, a couple of hundred people. Writing things that are going to be both interesting and somewhat entertaining: that is the challenge of a blog. You have no captive readership because they can click away in a second so that's the challenge.
BO: Have you had any experience with photography or food photography, in particular?
BG: I've not particular experience with photography, in fact very minimal experience. The dining services here makes it quite easy to photograph.
BO: Bowdoin rotates its menus. Do you ever get bored with a particular dish or do you enjoy a particular dish?
BG: They only repeat their menus once every four weeks?that provides plenty of diversity so rarely is there an occasion where I feel like the food gets repetitive. I do enjoy, consistently, the salad bar which is pretty much the same every day although they have some variety. They have a lot of great, healthy staples in there that I really enjoy.
BO: Understanding that you haven't eaten at every college, do you think that Bowdoin really deserves to be ranked for No. 1 for food?
BG: I think that A) Bowdoin has great food and that B) the staff and the management do an incredible job and take incredible pride [in what they do]. I really can't speak to other schools, but I think this school certainly deserves to be recognized for going out of their way to create a great dining experience for their students.
]On the web: www.bowdoingourmet.com.