This is a big weekend for students selling food. The day before “Feel Good” debuts their grilled charity cheese, three freshmen are going public with their own culinary venture, in an event they call “C is for Crunk, B is for Breakfast.” (Unfortunately for observant Jews, “YK is for Yom Kippur, F is for Fasting,” but there’ll be other days.)

Much as “Feel Good” saves a suffering  part of the world populace, “Breakfast At Ovo’s” saves a dying part of American culture: the homemade breakfast. Breakfast is even under attack from our corporations:  Dannon tries to hustle adults into trading their breakfast for a Frusion Smoothie, and Yoplait recruits on-the-go kids to squirt themselves a tube of Go-Gurt rather than sit down at a table with their families.

Asovoene “Ovo” Rerri, Tom Amegadzie and Trevis Joyner are having none of it, and anybody with four dollars in hand can have all of the home-cooked breakfast they want, if they stop by Hartley 2C on Saturday between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm. Pancakes of all varieties, french toast, hominy grits, scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit are on the menu, and students can wash it down with O.J. or iced tea.



Ovo says the chefs aim to break even rather than turn a profit. Why go to all the work? “It started as just a way to meet people,” he said, “now it’s a sort of non-profit business.” If their enthusiasm doesn’t fade as the suite turns into a madhouse, the chefs plan to continue serving breakfast on a biweekly basis, and to slowly expand the menu in the future. Profit or not, their business seems to be doing all right in terms of volume – 30 diners showed up last week, and the “Breakfast at Ovo’s” facebook group, which opened this week, already has over 100 members.

 The obligatory response to enthusiastic freshmen is that Columbia will crush their dreams or worse. Maybe so. Perhaps the CPA will rush to shut down this “crunk party
” advertised on facebook, or it could be the case that Columbia Catering is the exclusive catering service in Hartley as well as Lerner, or the group might apply for official recognition and get stuck in the molasses swamp of event approval. But why speculate – when babies are born, do we bet on how long they’ll live? This ain’t medieval England. This is America, an international beacon of pancakes. – DHI


   From left to right: Trevis Joyner, Ovo Rerri,

 Tom Amegadzie.