It’s that time of year again. As I write, Duke’s Young Trustee finalists are making their rounds among student organizations, trying to rack up endorsements. While we here at Spoon do not endorse any of the candidates, we are curious about their thoughts on one topic in particular: food. As per the Duke Student Government, Young Trustee candidates should not run on a platform. But that doesn’t exclude them from having opinions on kale, late-night food or even Guy Fieri. So we sat down with each of the four finalists to hear what they had to say.
Disclaimer: This is not an official endorsement of any of the Young Trustee finalists. The Duke Spoon team believes that each candidate is extremely qualified and would serve well if elected.
Bryce Cracknell
Major: Public Policy with a minor in Environmental Science and Policy
Duke Spoon: What is your favorite dish?
Bryce Cracknell: It ranges from salmon to pasta to really good gourmet pizza.
DS: What is your favorite eatery on campus?
BC: My go-to is Tandoor. I also love Divinity Cafe. And I love Marketplace for lunch. I know all of the people there and they’re wonderful. I like knowing the folks that make good food— they’re awesome. The food also just tastes good. They use seasoning, which is hard to find sometimes.
DS: What is your favorite restaurant in Durham?
BC: There are many, but I just went to Luna. It was fantastic. I waited 90 minutes for it, but it was awesome.
DS: What is the strangest thing you have eaten?
BC: When I first went abroad to Thailand for DukeEngage, there was an open market in which we tried all sorts of bugs and crickets— some of which were alive and moving. So that was new, but I did it. It was fine.
DS: What are your opinions of Guy Fieri?
BC: No major opinions. I’m glad he can make money saying that he likes food. I mean that’s the easiest job in the world. When I was in DC two summers ago, there was a Mexican restaurant near the capitol that served really good tacos. For some reason he had been there and his face was plastered on the wall. I was like, “where hasn’t this guy been?” But he doesn’t do much for me.
DS: Can and do you cook? If so, what is your signature dish?
BC: My signature dish would probably be enchiladas in a crock pot. I got the recipes from my mother.
DS: What is something you cook poorly?
BC: I don’t do breakfast well; mostly because my breakfasts are usually just cereal and milk. I don’t enjoy cooking breakfast… but I can cook pancakes!
DS: You’ve just gotten back from a long night out. What do you eat?
BC: I don’t go to McDonald’s. I might make a stop at Cookout to get a milkshake. I love their hush puppies and whatnot.
DS: So what’s your favorite Cookout milkshake?
BC: I always go for the Oreo milkshake. Or the Oreo Mint if it’s not available. When you have a staple and it’s that go, there’s no point in trying something else.
DS: It’s raining hard outside so you’re curled up on your couch and don’t feel like cooking. What do you order for delivery?
BC: MediTerra. I really like their chicken kebab rice platters with green beans and extra hummus.
DS: If you had to get rid of one Thanksgiving food item, what would it be and why?
BC: Thanksgiving at my house is a huge to-do. Everyone from my mom’s side of the family comes down— they all live in North Carolina. All of the food is so good. But I could get rid of my dad’s stuffing. It’s just him and maybe three other people who eat it.
DS: Is it stuffing in general? Or your dad’s stuffing in particular.
BC: It’s stuffing that my dad asks for, and is the main consumer of. Otherwise we wouldn’t make it.
DS: Favorite drink?
BC: The thing I drink most is water. The second thing I drink most is milk. I’m pretty boring when it comes to drinks.
DS: Noodles or rice?
BC: Rice.
DS: Spinach or kale?
BC: Depends on how it’s cooked, but I’ll say kale.
DS: Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?
BC: Chocolate.
DS: Thoughts on mayonnaise?
BC: If it’s real, I’m okay with it. If it’s the fake stuff with ingredients I can’t pronounce [grimaces]… no. Like Miracle Whip, that’s just random things that they put together.
Amy Kramer
Major: Public Policy and Political Science
Duke Spoon: What is your favorite dish?
Amy Kramer: If I could eat one meal for the rest of my life, it would be a burrito bowl from Chipotle— half chicken and half steak. They usually give you about 30% more meat that way too.
DS: What is your favorite eatery on campus?
AK: I like the Divinity Cafe. I think the grilled cheese and tomato soup is divinely inspired. I also run into more people there than anywhere else.
DS: What is your favorite restaurant in Durham?
AK: Can I say Chipotle? I also think Juju has some excellent food. For casual meals, Chipotle, but if my family’s coming, Juju.
DS: What is the strangest thing you have eaten?
AK: I had lunch many years ago in a Druze community. They served this meat, and to this day I don’t know what animal it came from. It tasted good, but I still have no idea what it was. They wouldn’t tell us. It looked like a sausage… When we asked they said “Good, meat!” I don’t want to know…
DS: What are your opinions of Guy Fieri?
AK: I’m more of a Gordon Ramsey type of gal. I watch MasterChef Junior religiously. Though if I can get my hair to look like [Fieri’s], it would be a good day.
DS: Can and do you cook?
AK: I have an apartment, so I do have a kitchen. I have a very long group chat with a bunch of friends, and every time we see something on Tasty that we want to make, we’ll put it on the group chat. So I have a list of easily 200 recipes that I want to make. One day I will go through each and every recipe— but it’s more of a calorie issue than anything. I can make anything that requires a microwave.
DS: What is your signature dish?
AK: Baked ziti. Because it’s not that hard to put a lot of cheese and pasta together. Actually I’ll say chicken baked ziti. I cook the chicken.
DS: What is something you wish you could cook well?
AK: A good steak. Nothing fancy, but a nicely cooked steak.
DS: You have just gotten back from a long night out. What do you eat?
AK: Popcorn. Though I do usually eat a grapefruit a day, and I think that anyone who doesn’t like grapefruit is cutting it wrong and eating it wrong. I basically keep the grapefruit industry open. Though I don’t think I would eat that after a long night out. I usually eat that as a dessert.
DS: It’s raining hard outside so you’re curled up on your couch and don’t feel like cooking. What do you order for delivery?
AK: It’s raining, so it’s probably cold and gross… maybe just a cheese pizza. Nothing too fancy.
DS: Any particular pizza place you prefer?
AK: Enzo’s.
DS: If you had to get rid of one Thanksgiving food item, what would it be and why?
AK: I don’t want to sound blasphemous, but my family usually makes chicken and brisket instead of the turkey. Though I would say the green bean casserole. We don’t need that.
DS: Favorite drink?
AK: Lemonade. Any kind of lemonade.
DS: Noodles or rice?
AK: Rice.
DS: Spinach or kale?
AK: Kale.
DS: Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?
AK: Vanilla. But if there are chocolate chips or chocolate cookie dough in the vanilla, that’s what I would get.
DS: Thoughts on mayonnaise?
AK: No.
Chinmay Pandit
Major: Economics and Political Science
Duke Spoon: What is your favorite dish?
Chinmay Pandit: Chicken parmesan. It has most of the food groups, or all the important ones at least.
DS: What is your favorite eatery on campus?
CP: Divinity Cafe.
DS: What is your favorite restaurant in Durham?
CP: I really like Gonza. Their steak tacos are so good. I also love the vibe there; it’s super friendly and fun. Also when you have a birthday, they go all out and it’s pretty funny.
DS: What is the strangest thing you have eaten?
CP: I ate a cockroach in Cambodia once.
DS: What are your opinions of Guy Fieri?
CP: I know his show but I’ve never seen it… I would defer to people with stronger opinions. But I think his name is interesting.
DS: Can and do you cook?
CP: I’ve learned this year. I moved off campus, so I was kind of forced to. But it’s a lot of chicken and pasta and rice. Actually, I made salmon recently so I was pretty proud of that. It’s very different from what I used to do, which was just cereal and PB&J sandwiches.
DS: What would you consider your signature dish?
CP: Chicken with some soy sauce and maybe a little Hoisin sauce. I’ll add some grilled bell peppers, and put it all over some pasta or spaghetti.
DS: What is something you wish you could cook well?
CP: I wish I could cook good vegan food well. I’ve been having this moral dilemma about whether I should go to vegetarianism or at least reduce my meat intake. I feel like every logical argument lends itself to reducing my meat intake, but I just don’t know how to make good food without it.
DS: What is something you cook poorly?
CP: I tried to make this pineapple upside down cake once… It was upside down, but not in the right way. Just desserts in general actually. If it’s not brownie mix, I’m pretty atrocious at it.
DS: You have just gotten back from a long night out. What do you eat?
CP: Cosmic Cantina.
DS: It’s raining hard outside so you’re curled up on your couch and don’t feel like cooking. What do you order for delivery?
CP: Some green curry from Sushi Love. Especially because it’s a five second walk from my apartment.
DS: If you had to get rid of one Thanksgiving food item, what would it be and why?
CP: Probably the mashed potatoes. I just find them bland and slightly overrated. I don’t know why they’re a staple. I think potatoes themselves are very flexible. You can make french fries, hash browns, baked potatoes… you can do so many things with them. But I think this particular manifestation of potatoes is not up to par with the rest of them.
DS: I actually love mashed potatoes...
CP: [Laughs] Sorry! I guess we won’t have Thanksgiving together.
DS: Favorite Drink?
CP: Non-alcoholic: orange juice. Alcoholic: Fat Tire. Mostly because New Belgium is from Ft. Collins in Colorado, where I’m also from.
DS: Noodles or rice?
CP: Noodles.
DS: Spinach or kale?
CP: Spinach.
DS: Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?
CP: Chocolate.
DS: Thoughts on mayonnaise?
CP: I hate it. Like what is it? I always explicitly ask for no mayonnaise any time I order any sandwich. Just thinking about it, or even looking at a jar of it… makes me uncomfortable.
Liz Brown
Major: Political Science and Global Health with a minor in Cultural Anthropology
Duke Spoon: What is your favorite dish?
Liz Brown: The dish that I can eat all the time is macaroni and cheese. But very specific types: I like Kraft mac’ and cheese at my house, and I like it hard. I also appreciate a nice mac’ and cheese— I get it at pretty much any restaurant that I go to. That’s pretty non-adventurous. So something that is a little more adventurous are these thing called snegles. I studied abroad in Copehnagen, and they had these pastries that are essentially giant cinnamon buns. Now I’m obsessed with them. They’re pretty dank.
DS: What is your favorite eatery on campus?
LB: My favorite is Divinity Cafe. I always get the grilled cheese and soup. I used to like ABP [Au Bon Pain] because I used to love their mac’ and cheese, but now it’s ass— it’s so bad now! I don’t know what happened, because it used to be amazing. I wasn’t kidding when I said I hunt down mac’ and cheese. So now I have to stick with Divinity Cafe. Their fruit is also good. I hate fruit cups that are melon-based, and they have non-melon-based fruit cups. In WU [West Union], I always go for Tandoor. I’m always starving when I get to WU, and they giving heaping portions.
DS: What is your favorite restaurant in Durham?
LB: My favorite restaurant to go to to hangout is Beyu Caffe. They have jazz every night and spoken word. I do all my work off-campus, and I do it there. Their green tea is better than everywhere else, and I stand by that firmly. I love a bunch of restaurants by the same owner: Mateo’s, Saint James, Lucky’s, Mothers and Sons. I love all of them. They’ve gotten a little too pretentious, and it bugs me, but can’t deny that they have amazing food. So I actually think I prefer Gocciolina. It’s amazing. It’s not a gentrifying restaurant, which is something that I think is a problem for a lot of Durham restaurants. Gocciolina is outside of the downtown area in a strip mall. It’s not driving up the property values, but it has the most amazing Italian food. It’s genuine, good food and a good, family atmosphere.
DS: What is the strangest thing you have eaten?
LB: I worked for a summer in Argentina, and in a really small town in the southern part of the country I had this one liver dish. Maybe it was deer liver? I’m trying to remember what exactly it was. I’m mad I can’t remember it, but I guess I must have blocked it out of my memory. I just remember thinking it was really bad. In Copenhagen, one of the things we ate all the time was open-faced sandwiches. They’re called smørrebrøds. I was actually in the culinary living-learning community while I was there, and they made us be very experimental with what we ate. On one of our smørrebrød we put beef paste. So it was an open-faced beef paste sandwich. Not the strangest thing, but definitely the most disgusting thing I’ve eaten. We did make a really good smørrebrød though with fresh shrimp and parsley. But eff beef paste.
DS: What are your opinions of Guy Fieri?
LB: I love all things tacky, and I love C-list celebrity culture. So I love him as an entity that exists. Actually listening to him speak though— he’s so annoying. I cannot stand him. But I love the existence of people like Guy Fieri. C-list celebrity culture is my hobby, my niche interest. And Guy Fieri definitely fits that. But the show, and his actual voice… no. Uninterested.
DS: Can and do you cook?
LB: No. I’m the worst cook in the entire world. I lived on central campus and I cooked maybe twice. Mainly because I’m always super stressed about time. It really bugs me that it takes me so long to cook, and then I eat it in 30 seconds. So I wish I could get around that. I wish I didn’t feel so disappointed with that. But now, my roommate is trying to get me to start cooking. When I was abroad I had to cook. My specialty is boiled pasta or peanut butter toast. Which my roommate says is not cooking.
DS: Hey, it’s fine, you made it yourself and you eat it!
LB: Yeah! I put bread in a toaster! I made it and then I ate it! But yeah, no. I do not cook.
DS: What is something you wish you could cook well?
LB: My mom is an amazing cook. Every Christmas Eve she makes this tenderloin that she lets marinate for six days. It’s the most amazing thing ever. It melts in your mouth. It’s a tradition that we have— it’s actually a secret recipe that my mom passes down to all my cousins when they get married. So I don’t actually have the recipe yet, but maybe one day if I get married…
DS: Any horror stories of you trying to cook?
LB: From elementary through high school, I was in a Spanish immersion program. In high school we always had to cook Spanish dishes. I had to do it for a project once, and I had to make my own paella and fried empanadas. I did such a terrible job. The stuffing of the empanadas was supposed to be this beef and pepper mixture, but I didn’t cook the beef all the way, obviously. And then I fried it without closing them. It was so bad. And my whole family had to eat it. It took me genuinely so long to make it. And it was so bad. I was so embarrassed! I feel like that’s a horror story because it was in high school but I still remember it.
The other thing is that the summer after my first year I lived with the BN Duke scholars. Every week one of us was assigned to cook a meal. Everyone made incredible food, but I made pimento grilled cheese with a side of washed fruit, canned Campbell’s soup, and Goldfish to put in the soup. The one thing I actually did do was grill the sandwiches, and I burned them so badly. Everyone was so nice about it, and they all knew I couldn’t cook. So it was fun, but embarrassing.
DS: At least you didn’t try to cook something really fancy…
LB: Right? I knew my limits, but I still messed it up, which is why it was so disappointing.
DS: You have just gotten back from a long night out. What do you eat?
LB: When I lived on central, always pizza. But now that I live off campus, it’s harder to get things delivered. So normally I drive through Cookout. I’m from here, so it’s funny because when I was little, Cookout was such a treat. But now it’s the nasty junk food. I’ve also really gotten into Luna bars… my roommate bought a lot of Luna bars for herself to eat for breakfast, but I’ve gotten in the habit of eating them when I come back from a late night. Which is bad, because I’m not supposed to.
DS: It’s raining hard outside so you’re curled up on your couch and don’t feel like cooking. What do you order for delivery?
LB: I’ve gotten really into Guasaca lately. I think you can get it on Uber eats. I’ve been eating it so much. I got hooked on it because for a few different retreats I went on last year they had Guasaca. For some reason it didn’t latch its hooks on me before, but this year… I’ve had it twice this week already.
DS: If you had to get rid of one Thanksgiving food item, what would it be and why?
LB: Cranberry sauce. I love cranberry juice, but I hate cranberry sauce. The canned, jellied one.
DS: Favorite drink?
LB: I drink regular Coke, which I know is unpopular. I love it. I’m really against this whole soda smear campaign, because so many things are so unhealthy for you, and it’s really all about moderation. So of course Coke is really unhealthy, but so is everything else! I drink a Coke pretty much every day. It’s my coffee. As for alcoholic drinks, I like Redbull vodkas. At Shooters. I’ll get a nicer drink if I’m somewhere else.
DS: Noodles or rice?
LB: Noodles.
DS: Spinach or kale?
LB: Kale.
DS: Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?
LB: Vanilla.
DS: Thoughts on mayonnaise?
LB: Love it. It makes everything better. My dad eats mayo, peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Obviously I don’t want to spoon-eat mayo, but it makes every sandwich better! It just does.
Whether or not their food opinions mean anything to you, don’t forget to vote for the Young Trustee on February 12th to 13th!