Chef James Dowless has only been at Ball State for one year, but his impact on Woodworth’s food is seen every day.
The recently Certified Executive Chef had only heard of Ball State and knew nothing about it before working at Woodworth.
He didn’t apply for the job at Ball State; his wife did for him.
“[My wife] said where’s all your information, I’m just gonna apply for it for you and I said OK,” Dowless said. “Two days later, I got a call and it just started from there.”
A former restaurant owner, Dowless was attracted to the Ball State position because of the set schedule. When he arrived, he was captivated by the cleanliness of the kitchen but soon found other positive aspects of the job. He frequently interacts with the almost 200 students and several employees who work at Woodworth.
“When I got here and then started learning about everything, I’ve just fallen in love with it,” Dowless said. “The way I’ve worked for 30 years is kind of smaller, 150 seat restaurants or less … [coming here] is pretty overwhelming in the beginning but you keep plugging away.”
One thing Dowless loves about working at Ball State is getting to recreate some of the dishes he was able to cook at his restaurant.
“I’m able to start making a lot of dishes that I used to make like the shrimp and grits,” he said. “We’re making the hamburger I used to make at my restaurant with the peanut butter [on it].”
Dowless uses his recipes to cook various dishes, but his favorite item to make is the macaroni and cheese. Sometimes, Woodworth will go through 10 pans of mac and cheese just for lunch and plans to have a “mac and cheese day” with three different varieties right before finals.
His macaroni and cheese recipe is an original one. To make it, Dowless uses a cooked roux — a mixture of flour and fat.
Another popular item at Woodworth is buffalo chicken dip. After some students requested the menu item be brought back in Fall 2015, it returned for a one-day trial and is now served frequently.
“That was one of our biggest social media engagement events ever … they had served [the dip] in the past, but it wasn’t the same recipe,” Dining Marketing Coordinator Suzanne Clem said. “Through some friendly Twitter banter with these students, we came up with the arrangement that we’d do a on- day trial of it and if it sold well, we’d consider adding it to menu.”
Dowless has plans for his kitchen, such as serving a different kinds of meat like pork, beef, chicken and fish each day and putting more emphasis on custom-made items such as sandwiches.
“My goal is to each semester change like three or four things, so that way each thing that we change, we’re really super good at as opposed to trying to change everything,” Dowless said. “We’re always making sample things that we’re going to make for next semester, trying different things.”
Whether it’s pounds of mac and cheese, buffalo dip or a new sample recipe, Dowless enjoys creating menu items and experimenting in Woodworth’s kitchen.
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