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From preparing food for one of The Beatles to feeding a campus of thousands, Dixon believes in cooking with heart.

In the depths of Student Union Memorial Center exists a hidden, bustling world. It's the union's production kitchen, where cooks busily prepare meals for campus's long list of eateries, catered events and convenience stores.

At the helm of the operation is Vincent Dixon, the production kitchen's senior supervisor. He came to The University of Arizona in 1999 from the Oro Valley Country Club, where he worked as a banquet chef.

Dixon has been a key behind-the-scenes player in keeping food on campus tables for the past 10 years. Lo Que Pasa sat down with him to chat about his favorite foods, his early days as a chef and what happens in the kitchen when campus falls quiet for the summer.  

How is cooking for a college audience different from cooking elsewhere?
The volume. Working at the country club you might be serving a maximum of 200 people a night, whereas we probably feed 10,000 students per day throughout the various different units and through catering. Catering is a very big, a multimillion dollar operation here, so the main difference is batch cooking. You have to be very aware of food staying at the peak of quality. When you're cooking a la carte, if you ruin one meal you can just start another one, but not when you're batch cooking for a couple of thousand people.

How did you start cooking?
About 37 years ago I moved to Southern California and started working at a vegetarian restaurant called The Magic Apple Inn. It was a very unique, eclectic type of restaurant. I started there as a graveyard clean-up guy. The chef was so impressed with how clean I was keeping his kitchen he decided to take me under his wing, and then I started learning about cooking. The restaurant was located between three major studios – there was NBC, ABC and Burbank studios – and Warner Brothers was also within a mile, so we attracted a lot of celebrities. I did a catered event for George Harrison from The Beatles. Frank Zappa came in, David Carradine. We also serviced some of the situation comedies of that time – "Three's Company," "All in the Family." We did on-premise catering for the studios, so cooking became a whole new adventure.

What's the best part of your job now?
The variety and the challenge. There are constant changes. When you've got a catered event with a sit-down dinner for 50 people, you've ordered enough product for that event. Then the next day it goes up to 68, so then you have a new challenge to accommodate all those clients. It's never, ever boring.

What's your favorite dish to prepare?
I really like to cook beef stroganoff. That's one of my favorites. Chicken cacciatore I also like cooking; it's a very homey dish. A lot of my concepts regarding food come from the (first) two restaurants (I worked in). Primarily, they taught me to never be afraid to try something new, to always cook with love, and if you were not feeling very giving or loving then you'd better step back from what you're cooking, because they taught that the energy you created your food with went into your food.

Do you have a favorite restaurant?
No, not really. My wife would probably agree that she has to kind of fight me to get me out to eat. Once I go I enjoy it, but if you're working in a restaurant all day you don't really want to go to a restaurant, so we do most of our cooking at home.

How do you keep busy during the summer months when everybody's gone?
We have the orientations and we have camps on the premises. Summer school is open and there are different groups that come on campus, but things do slow down. That gives us the time to really research new ideas or refine recipes that may not be working out. It gives us the opportunity to really pick apart a recipe.

What do you eat to cool down when its 100 degrees outside?
Once in a while I'll come upstairs for a frozen yogurt or go over to The Cellar for a milkshake. That's my reward at the end of a very long, hard, hot day.