Food service workers will soon get used to seeing a new face on campus, as Monique King, Associated Students UCLA’s first executive chef, familiarizes herself with the ins and outs of the many restaurants scattered around UCLA.
The new position was created as part of a new effort to improve ASUCLA’s food services, said Cindy Bolton, director of food services at ASUCLA.
King oversees all the culinary aspects of the 13 ASUCLA-operated restaurants across the UCLA campus, such as Northern Lights and Café Synapse, Bolton said.
ASUCLA started searching for a chef in June, after ASUCLA Food Service officials indicated the need for someone to catalogue and analyze the nutritional value of ASUCLA food and look for discrepancies within the restaurant system, Bolton said.
King’s 23-year experience as both a chef and a restaurant owner made her the strongest candidate, said Bob Williams, executive director of ASUCLA who brought the proposal for the new position to the association’s board of directors, along with Bolton.
King was born and raised in Los Angeles. She currently co-owns a restaurant with her husband in Pasadena.
She also owned a New Orleans-style restaurant in Chicago in the early 1990s, before moving back to California.
King said she originally entered the restaurant business after she graduated college and was looking for a career in the arts. She found that cooking fulfilled this desire.
“The plate is a canvas (too); there’s textures, there’s colors,” she said.
King is attracted to more than just the creative side of cooking.
“To be able to create, and be artistic, in a fast-paced and specifically organized type of environment just worked for me,” she said.
It was her love of the restaurant business, as well as cooking, that made her stay with it for 23 years, she added.
With her three children now entering adolescence, King said she applied for the executive chef position in part because it is on a college campus.
“I wanted to be part of that next thing,” she said.
One of ASUCLA’s goals is to collect all the nutritional information for food sold in student service restaurants over the course of 18 months, and to analyze the nutritional value of its food service, Bolton said.
ASUCLA officials also intend to put the nutritional information on the menu boards so that students can easily know the nutritional facts of the food they order, Bolton said.
King also has the authority to update or add menu items as the executive chef, Bolton said.
Before she starts working on any major projects or instituting any changes, King said she wants to get a lay of the land and get a sense of how ASUCLA restaurants operate.
“It takes a unique set of skills to go from coffeehouses, to catering, to food operations,” Williams said.
She added that she is looking forward to ensuring overall food quality and checking the economic efficiency of the system.
“I was really drawn to come here to do something big and different,” King said. “It was meant to be.”