Student initiative Street Meat’s five-course meal signals a business evolution

Despite the name, student-run food service group Street Meat is venturing past sidewalk beef and toward the gourmet — and doing it successfully.

The group hosted “Special Meat,” an intimate five-course dinner with paired drinks in the backyard of Hammarskjöld on Oct. 19. Throughout the night, 20 attendees commented on the food and on Street Meat’s evolution.

Street Meat started when Robert Kirchenbauer ’25 and Akshay Shah ’25 met in a PWR class about food in their sophomore year. From there, an idea of running a food service business tailored to students was born. They soon looped in Caeden Greene ’25, and the trio began cooking hot dogs outside of fraternities for the first time in October 2022 as “a way to cook with my best friends and feed the communities that we create,” according to Greene. Jack Fox ’26 joined the group during the 2023-2024 school year.

Selling food outside parties was not ideal, however. 

“The problem was people didn’t want to pay,” Shah said. “We had to juggle cooking the food and getting people to actually come and making sure they didn’t steal.”

Starting in May 2023, Stanford, including several departments and housing neighborhoods, began hiring the group to cater events. The business’ first gig was the Athletic Department’s annual superlative Stanny Awards.

Since then, Street Meat has focused on serving pre-paid events, cooking a wide range of foods from tacos to beignets for events like sports tailgates and FLiCKS.

The semi-formal dinner might mark another evolution for Street Meat, said attendee Joe Tey ’25. 

“From selling hot dogs outside frats, it’s amazing,” he said. “Every menu is hand written, which is insane.” The table was decorated with the aforementioned menus, name cards and flowers.

The first meal was a butternut squash and pumpkin soup with homemade focaccia bread. To attendee Felix Fonrobert ’25, the soup was the star.

“This consistency, it’s what every soup should be,” Fonrobert said. “The puree texture is almost like baby food… but delicious, elevated baby food, of course.”

Attendee Zoe Bumstead ’25 also enjoyed the soup, describing it as “a savory version of a pumpkin pie.”

After the members of Street Meat and Greene’s sister Casey Greene ’28, who also wrote the menus and name cards, cleaned the plates from the first course, they presented the second dish: a salmon gravlax crudo.

The visuals of the plate immediately stood out, with the pieces of cut salmon delicately placed atop crème fraiche. 

“The plating is done intentionally and artfully. I like how you don’t know what it is from the first glance,” said attendee Kealia Victorino ’25. “I had no idea this was salmon but once I looked closely, it’s totally salmon.”

Other attendees appreciated the combination of salmon with fig in the dish. Zach Zafran ’25, who previously wrote for The Daily’s sports section, noted the surprise of sweetness among the savory. 

When asked what prompted the turn toward this fancier dinner, Shah said, “we wanted to push ourselves. And people said we couldn’t do it, it wasn’t our brand, but we like a bit of a challenge.” 

After the guests finished the crudo, the third meal was presented as a family-style hearty salad with kale, apple, brussels sprouts and fennel.

Zafran acknowledged the drink pairings for every course.

“Apple in the cider… apple in the salad… I mean c’mon, that’s art,” Zafran said.

The apple in the salad proved to be a big talking point, with attendee Kyle Haslett ’25 asking the table, “Y’all ever have apples in a salad? Because this s— is gas.”

The fourth dish followed shortly after and was a crowd favorite: beef osso buco and risotto alla Milanese. After the first bite, attendee Jeremy Merritt ’25 said, “This is the one. If there ever was one, this is it. This is tender well-seasoned meat.”

“The way this beef is cooked shows love and care. This really is a Michelin restaurant,” Victorino said, perhaps in reference to Kirchenbauer’s summer working as a line cook for Michelin-recognized San Francisco restaurant Frances.

Despite the liveliness of the night, the beef and risotto dish quieted the dinner crowd — “a sign of a great meal,” Fonrobert said.

The fifth and final dish was a sweet potato pie, a recipe from Kirchenbauer’s grandmother.

Paired with black coffee, Tey said it was “the cherry on top of a great dinner.”

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