Photo courtesy of Southwest Minnesota State University The team for the Southwest Minnesota State University fall 2025 session of The Mustang Kitchen includes (front row, left to right) Cecelia Parmeter, Jocelyn Kletzien, Dr. Joyce Hwang, Emily Jacobson, Dante Fertig, (back row, left to right) Lilly Banasik, Isabella Fennern, McKenna Orr and Michael Boyd.

MARSHALL — The student-led restaurant experience of The Mustang Kitchen is again opening up to the public for the fall semester at Southwest Minnesota State University, hosting a series of dinners served by Culinology and Hospitality Management students.

There’s a total of eight nights where community members are welcomed to dine at the university, with the first four dates exploring a “Rustic Fall” theme, and the final four will have a menu theme of “Bold and Spicy.”

“Mustang Kitchen is a restaurant run by students taking Restaurant Food Operations class in the Hospitality Management program. Students take the lecture portion in the spring where they learn concepts related to planning and operating a restaurant, and plan the actual operation for Mustang Kitchen from menu, recipe and pricing,” Associate Professor of Hospitality Management Dr. Joyce Hwang said.

“In the fall, the lab portion happens where they get to execute the plan. During lab each week, students in the class rotate positions from dishwasher to manager. The student manager of the week assigns work, makes sure all the dishes go out to customers as planned, and analyzes the result from profit to customer and employee evaluation.”

The students for this semester’s Mustang Kitchen, responsible for the meals and dining experience, are Lilly Banasik, Michael Boyd, Isabella Fennern, Dante Fertig, Emily Jacobson, Jocelyn Kletzien, McKenna Orr and Cecelia Parmeter.

Each meal will consist of three courses with a choice appetizer, choice of entrée and dessert. The appetizers and desserts change each week, but the five dinner selections will remain the same.

“I, as the instructor of this class, give a few boundaries, such as recipes with ingredients easy to acquire around Marshall, a menu that is not readily available through restaurants in Marshall, dishes that are nice to be served at a sit down restaurant with upscale service level,” Hwang said. “Students come up with menu items that satisfy these boundaries.”

For the October series with the “Rustic Fall’ theme, dinners are Oct. 16, 23 and 30.

The entrée choices are pumpkin beef stew, apple and fennel stuffed port, jalapeno popper chicken, crab stuffed salmon and autumn hollow squash.

Come November, dinners are on the 6th, 13th, 20th and the final one is on Dec. 4. With the “Bold and Spicy” theme, entrée choices will be beef braciole, spinach and feta pork roulade, cajun chicken pot pie, spicy stuffed shrimp and stuffed poblano rellenos.

The weekly altering appetizer and dessert menu will cover a variety of new tastes and treats for people to enjoy as well.

“I think students are excited and eager to see how their plan will actually turn out, and the reaction of the customers,” Hwang said.

The Oct. 9 appetizers are a choice of a strawberry walnut salad, or pesto goat cheese bites. The dessert is raspberry chocolate macarons.

The appetizers on Oct. 16 are cranberry brie knots or an avocado citrus salad, with black forest cheesecake as the desert.

Stuffed dates or beef tartlet headline the Oct. 23 appetizers, with a miso caramel cream puff as the desert.

The Oct. 30 appetizers are either cheesy bites or a crispy harvest salad, and harvest cheesecake dream for dessert.

Kicking off the “Bold and Spicy” menu theme, the Nov. 6 appetizers are the choice of stuffed pretzels or minestrone soup. The dessert will be pistachio shrikhand cake.

Nov. 13 appetizers are prosciutto and burrata crostini, or lacy chicken dumplings. A Gochujang caramel cookie sundae will be the dessert.

People can enjoy either pani puri or mulligatawny soup on Nov. 20 for the appetizers, with spiced apple rum cake to end the night.

For the final night of the Fall Semester Mustang Kitchen on Dec. 4, appetizers will be between bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers or spicy edamame, with chocolate pie for dessert.

“This is (for) a class. After each business day, each class, students have to analyze and evaluate what happened that night,” Hwang said.

Community members looking to go to a dinner are asked to fill out a comment card in place of a tip, with feedback that will go back to the students.

There will be two seating times for each dinner session, at 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. People are asked to make a reservation ahead of time, at www.smsu.edu/go/mustangkitchen. The website also holds photos of all entrée choices and further breakdown of the meals.

“Since we open one day a week, we operate on a reservation basis to minimize waste. The class starts at 2 p.m. and start to prepare food, based on the reservations,” Hwang said. “Once customers arrive for their reserved time, they get seated and the rest is the same as other restaurants, except we do not accept tips since this is a part of class work.”

Meals, including all three courses, are $32 per person. Dinners are held at the SMSU Culinology and Hospitality Dining Room 116, in the Individualized Learning Building.