So if you’re a smarty pants and you worked really hard to get good grades, you are invited to join the Beta Sigma Kappa Honor Society. We pay for membership, but we get it all back in the form of recognition and delicious food!
To be invited to join BSK, you need a 3.5 GPA after you complete first year, and to maintain a slightly lower GPA requirement in subsequent years at ICO. It’s a club to promote academic excellence, and it’s great to have on your resume when you’re finally ready to look for a job post-graduation. Another major bonus is that you get cords at graduation and there’s an annual banquet at a fancy restaurant.
This year, we went out for lunch at Wildfire.
As you can see, all the tables were pretty filled up
Here’s the look of our menu at the banquet. I thought we were going to choose between each dish, but as it turns out, we get all of them, and shared!
My roommate walked faster than I did there to make sure we get a good seat, and we did! We sat with some lovely ladies who are also in second year, and unlike the other tables, we had two empty seats, so we had extra food as well!
So we started with bread and butter. It tasted a little bit garlicky, I wasn’t sure if it was the taste of the bread or coming from the butter, but it tasted very fresh and delicious. I’m normally not even a fan of bread, but it was yummy enough that I had seconds. It was soft with a light crisp crust, just the way I like my bread.
The baked goat cheese dip was my favorite item of the night. I thought I wasn’t a fan of goat cheese, but I was so wrong (I must have mixed it up with blue cheese or something). The bread had the texture of a lightly baked pizza crust, but with spices. I thought it looked like a pizza with sauce and toppings in a separate bowl, but when I tasted it with the cheese and marinara sauce on top, my taste buds were very impressed, more impressed than they would be with a pizza.
We actually had salad too, but I think I got so hungry at this point, that I just focused on eating and forgot about pictures. Lucky for you, the salad wasn’t anything special. We had a little tray of various salad dressing to choose from, and a plate with lettuce, tomatoes, egg, croutons, carrots (things you find in a normal house salad). I mean, I got my vegetables in, but I wouldn’t be craving to come back to the restaurant for the salad. For the baked goat cheese though? You bet!
This little meaty dish of carnivorous indulgence was definitely worth raving about. I normally like my steaks rare to medium rare, since I like the juices of the meat to be oozing out with every bite (I picture well done steaks like chewing cardboard). The tenderloin at Wildfire was incredibly tender–and it was not dry at all! In fact, it was packed with the perfect amount of flavor and juices. I would hopefully go back to Wildfire for this someday.
I’m a beef-lover. I cook chicken most of the time at home because it’s easy, but when I go out, I always go with the beef option. I didn’t try the chicken because I saved precious stomach space for the tenderloin, but the ones who did try the chicken at my table preferred the beef as well. It looked yummy nonetheless!
If you looked at the menu and tried to figure out why I didn’t take pictures of the vegetables and potatoes, I’m sorry, they looked like your standard normal veggies and potatoes. I promise you if it was sculpted into the shape of a lotus flower or something, I’d take a picture of it for you. I would like to add though, that the mashed potatoes were very good, light and buttery, with the skin mixed in.
I think all the best meals in the world need to end with a dessert so awesome, that it’s worth loosening your belt and gaining some healthy dessert weight. We were all extremely full by the end of the main course (remember, we had extra food too), but alas, there’s always space for dessert if one tries hard enough. The triple layer chocolate cake was rich, but it wasn’t too sweet at all. I’m a dark chocolate lover, and this was just about right for my picky palate. The whipped cream and the chocolate chunks were good, too.
But I really had my eyes set on the next dish. I love ice cream. I eat it when I’m sad, I eat it when I’m happy, I eat it when I’m stressed, it’s been there for me more than some of my closest friends. So what better way to wrap up lunch than to eat ice cream with fresh berries?
I thought dessert was the best way to end the event, but actually, the raffle prize drawing topped it all off perfectly. Unfortunately, I didn’t win anything, but if I keep up the hard work, hopefully I’ll be attending this banquet again next year at another great restaurant.
Drawing names for gift cards to Starbucks, Target and iTunes.
Frugal students must always remember to ask if we can take extra food home. We make sure nothing goes to waste, and we can save money and effort come dinner time.
We even got to leave with a cookie to take home on our way out.
There was no boring ceremony, no long list of names to be called. The banquet was just a way to recognize the people who put in a lot of effort in getting good grades and learning the best that they can to be the best optometrist they can be. For me, it was another wonderful afternoon of enjoying great food with even better company.