WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University’s Windsor Dining Court is hosting its last cultural night for the current academic year on April 8 with a celebration of Asian cuisine.

The Windsor Dining Court international station will feature Asian dishes such as Thai chicken basil stir fry, pork pot stickers, Singapore curry noodles, ginger pork and green bean stir fry, spring rolls, vegetable stir fry with peanuts, tempura batter vegetables and Tropical Paradise cake.

At the event, which is from 5-7 p.m., Windsor Dining Court’s international station will feature Asian dishes such as Thai chicken basil stir fry, pork pot stickers, Singapore curry noodles, ginger pork and green bean stir fry, spring rolls, vegetable stir fry with peanuts, tempura batter vegetables and Tropical Paradise cake.

Information tables will also be set up in the lobby of the dining court highlighting the contributions of Asian Americans to society.

The dinner is open to the public. Cost to dine is $9.50 for those not on a meal plan.

Windsor Dining Court has hosted two other cultural nights this semester. The first one celebrated Black History Month in February; the second honored the Women’s History Month in March.

Windsor began hosting cultural nights in 2007 after a student survey revealed the need for additional cultural opportunities for students that were informal in nature but engaging in content, said Wilfrido Cruz cultural programs administrator with Purdue’s Housing and Food Services.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Ivy Tech Community College is hosting its second annual Homecoming celebration on September 14, 2008 from 12pm to 2pm. The Lafayette-West Lafayette community is encouraged to join in the festivities which include children’s games, magic shows, a volleyball tournament, and a classic car show. The classic car show will have extended hours until 4pm.

New to this year’s Homecoming is a Chili Cook-off which is sure to feature some of the best chili in town. The Chili Cook-off will take place from 12pm to 2pm. The contest is open to all Ivy Tech students, employees, and alumni. To enter, please contact Beth LeBreton at blebreton@ivytehc.edu or call (765) 269-5218. The community is welcome to participate in the Chili Cook-off judging; the only requirement is to come hungry. Judging will begin at 1:30pm.

All Homecoming events will take place on the Ivy Tech campus located at 3101 South Creasy Lane, Lafayette, Indiana.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A quick update to the Lafayette Online Dining Guide.

The listing for Lafayette City Grill will be updated to show that they are no longer in business (as of sometime in February 2008), and no new reviews for that restaurant will be accepted. The listing will remain in the Lafayette Online Dining Guide for historical purposes, and when a new establishment opens in the old City Grill space, we will create a link between the two listings.

We’re sad to see them go. We really enjoyed the Sunday brunch and thought the City Grill was a wonderful addition to Downtown Lafayette.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Sagamore Room in Purdue Memorial Union will host a special dinner on Valentine’s Day. Reservations are being accepted now at (765) 494-8945. For a look at the menu, click here.

If this isn’t your first visit to the Lafayette Online Dining Guide, you’re probably wondering what the heck is going on here. What’s going on is that the Dining Guide, a part of Lafayette Online for more than 12 years, has gotten a facelift.

Was something wrong with the old Dining Guide?
The old ratings system we were using was neat; however, it wasn’t designed to handle the quantity of reviews we had and it wasn’t terribly resistant to people trying to inject spammy fake reviews into the system (which also contributed to gumming up the works). When the “works” got particulary mucked up, the system would sort of eat itself. So between the time required to manually reject all of the spam, and the system eating itself periodically, it was getting to be a hassle to manage it.

How does the new and improved Dining Guide compare to the old?
Our new Dining Guide is built on WordPress and has all sorts of new gadgets and gizmos like…

• spam filtering for the comments
• a shiny new AJAX-y graphic rating system
• new RSS feeds for official reviews and for user contributed comments
• a new Flickr photo sharing group for contributing your pictures of and from local restaurants 

We’ll probably keep adding cool stuff, and when we do, we’ll post it here in the Food News category.