Senior hospitality management students take over a restaurant called Pantera at 6 p.m. every Tuesday in Room 1418 of Klehm Hall.

A plate costs $13 per person and offers two options, the “Prix Fixe” menu with four courses and the “Special” menu with two courses.

Advance reservations are required to eat at Pantera. Customers must choose which menu they will be ordering from for the night of their reservation.

Orders can be changed the night of the meal.

Every Tuesday of the semester students will serve a dinner with a theme, which is picked by the student who is in control of the restaurant that night.

The class this restaurant is a part of is Commercial Quantity Food Production, which uses the theory-practicing model to allow students to experience hands-on examples.

Jim Painter, a professor for the class, said it is a senior level course, and the restaurant has been around for five years.

“The students are paired in twos, given a manual and the restaurant becomes theirs for a night,” he said.  “They plan, organize and pay for all the items they need, taking control of the entire process.”

The students become the managers for that night, and they are the ones who pick the theme for the night.

“They also are in control of the recipes that the cook prepares for the night,” Painter said.

For this upcoming restaurant experience, the chef who will be cooking is from Dirty’s Bar and Grill.  The senior family and consumer science majors who will be in charge are Allyssa Abubayyen and Nicole Sabecki.

“The theme of the dinner for (Tuesday) is Flower Power, which will be a fresh twist on this theme that other students have used in the past,” Abubayyen said.  “It is a Hawaiian Mediterranean fusion, which will be a mixing cultures.”

She said the menu would consist of a unique melon salsa and a tropical salad that is handmade with fresh fruit.

Also on the menu will be Hawaiian chicken kabobs along with couscous, and an onion blossom will be added to the dish for decoration.

A pineapple upside down cake will be served for dessert.  The special for the evening will be a five-cheese bun.

“We wanted to create a healthy and fresh menu,” she said.

Abubayyen said taking control of the restaurant is a unique experience.

“It is stressful, a lot of teamwork and planning, but it rewarding in the end,” she said.

She said this experience is preparing her for the future because it is not just reading from a book; it is doing the work herself.

“It takes an army of people to get this done and the class helps us prepare,” Abubayyen said.  “The most important part of it all is to see the smiles on people’s faces when they are enjoying the food.”

Stephanie White can be reached at 581-2812 or at sewhite2@eiu.edu.