AIGA Dordt College student group: second anniversary

Chef Giovanni Romano in the kitchen at the Fruited Plain Café, Sioux Center, Iowa.
Photo credit: Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times.

Today is the second anniversary of the dcaiga blog and this site has gained regular visitors from all over the world. In addition to this blog, the AIGA Dordt College Student Group has held monthly events with guest designers who come to campus to talk about the world of graphic design and the work that designers engage in.

Either after the presentation or before, the students and I treat our guest designer to dinner at the Fruited Plain Café in their Backroom Bistro where on Wednesday evenings an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner is served. Last September our first guest was Erik Rodne who’s a versatile designer with HenkinSchultz in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Erik is young and smart and came early that day to help me with students’ critiques. As we began to eat our meals Erik commented that the pasta was done to perfection! I appreciated the fact that Erik noticed because in small-town NW Iowa, Italian food is perhaps the last thing you would expect. We sent word back to the kitchen to thank the cook, Giovanni.

Just recently I was reminded of the exceptional food that’s served here at the Backroom Bistro when my daughter in the Twin Cities asked if we had seen the article about Giovanni Romano in The New York Times. (The New York Times. Yes!)

Here’s the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/us/03iowa.html