At the end of September, TRU Alumni work study student Ryan Turcot met with TRU Career Education’s Larry Iles and his crew of TRU alumni and friends notoriously known as “The Difficult Diners” as they kicked off their 20th year of monthly dinner meet-ups.
“We’ve gone out [to dinner] at least 130 times – at least,” said Isles.
The club, founded by Iles and eight classmates from Cariboo College, began with a simple but adventurous concept: meet for dinner once a month, trying a new restaurant each time. Armed with a copy of a local phone book, the Difficult Diners decided to start with the first listing in the book, Ava Scmistlehouse, and work their way through the alphabet until they exhausted the list (which they did in four years).
What started as a casual crew of restaurant hoppers “got formal over [the next] 16 years,” Iles recalls. The club gradually began visiting restaurants based on each others’ recommendations, and they eventually developed a rating system for each restaurant they visited. “When we go to places, we rate it with ‘forks’ – for example two forks out of five,” Iles explains (did I mention they’re The Difficult Diners?). They also began hosting backyard barbeques during their summer months, deviating from their tradition of meeting at restaurants.
To this day, however, the club continues to meet once a month and new members have since joined in on the fun. “I think it’s neat that we’ve stuck with it,” Iles says, noting that “we’ve gone out [to dinner] at least 130 times – at least” over the past 20 years, and “we’re going to do it till’ the day we die,” Rino Cinel, another Difficult Diner, adds.
One question I had to ask them: what inspired them to call themselves The Difficult Diners? I guess I should have anticipated the answer: “we’re not shy to send away food,” Iles jokes, noting that the crew has rarely actually done so. “It’s funny because our
name intimidates restaurants when we visit,” he adds, noticing that even Accolades got a little bit nervous when the crew arrived.
The reunited friends had a great time, and it’s truly inspiring to see how connected these alumni and friends have remained over a two-decade span.
