Are you satisfied with your college area's late-night food options?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>I go to school at NYU and we have loads of late-night food options. The most popular are 1$ pizza slices and 4$ halal food (chicken or beef over rice). Now that I'm back in my suburban home for the summer, I greatly miss the convenience of late-night food in the city. This got me thinking: how do non-urban universities fare on late-night food; I mean, there is something magical in having the ability to get food at 3am after a night of getting plastered. </p>

<p>So please post</p>

<p>1) what university you go to
2) What your late-night food options are and if they are sufficient for your needs
3) Would you and your peers appreciate a late-night restaurant in walkable distance that offers 1$ pizza and 4$ halal (though I don't think the awesomeness of greasy halal is going to be understood by non-new yorkers, so think of a chicken leg instead).</p>

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<p>1) USC
2) Dining halls close around 10. We have a ton of fast food restaurants up and down Figueroa which I guess are okay. I haven’t been to many at night though so I don’t know how late they are open. I know Chanos (a Mexican place) is open really late. I don’t like how the Taco Bell right off campus closes at 10 and the Burger King closes at 11. I understand that the surrounding area isn’t the best, but considering it’s right outside a college campus, I think they should at least stay open until Midnight. But we have some positives, Domino’s delivers pizza and TG Express (a Thai place) is a really popular option. It delivers until 4 AM, which is pretty sweet.
3) Of course, who wouldn’t? $1 pizza slices sound awesome.</p>

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<p>I never used them.</p>

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<p>Omg I’m sorry but it’s $1 and $4, NOT 1$ and 4$. This is driving me absolutely bonkers.</p>

5

<p>^lol </p>

<p>10char</p>

6

<p>Against all logic, in the huge urban campus I live near, after-midnight food options seem to be limited to bars and pizza parlors, there is a weird shortage of, for example:</p>

<p>late night Chinese food
late night fast food besides McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or Rally’s (i.e. no BK, Long John Silvers, etc.)</p>

<p>Also, most of the late-night options are not car-friendly, so I eschew them because I’m not walking thirty minutes to get to Waffle House in a bad part of town at three in the morning, so I’m left with what’s open in the surrounding area. I’m so totally sick of McDonald’s, Taco Bell has been going downhill these last few years, and for good Chinese food I have to go elsewhere, in spite of the abundance of Chinese students on campus (I think they do all their cooking at home and eschew most Chinese-American restaurants). There are way more late-night options farther South, which is where all of the big new flagship shopping/eating areas on campus are. It’s also the ghetto-ist, most high-crime part of the whole campus and where most of the muggings and beatings have taken place.</p>

<p>So no, not happy. Here is what I want, not that I expect to get it:</p>

<p>1) For the 24-hour donut place to have parking
2) A 24-hour Chinese buffet.
3) A Long John Silver’s
4) A Burger King
5) A nigiri sushi meal that doesn’t cost more than the average Chinese takeout meal.
6) Good calzones available 24/7. Why are they so hard to find?
7) At least a little parking or a drive-through at all of these places.</p>

<p>My recommendation to high-schoolers thinking about where to go to college: if you’re like a lot of people your age and social class, you’ve lived in the 'burbs your whole life and think that going to college in an urban environment will be some kind of fun adventure, it’ll be like a little NYC like in the movies. But going to college in a suburban or even rural environment, while not glamorous or “exciting” like school in the middle of a big city is, has a lot of practical perks. Far fewer muggings and thefts, for example. Things, like food, are significantly cheaper because businesses have lower insurance, theft-prevention, and security costs and can pass those savings on to you. Easier access to discount stores like Wal-Marts (they don’t put Wal-Marts in the ghetto usually). Yes, there won’t be as much of a big late-night bar scene, you’ll be missing out on what a lot of Americans consider “the college experience,” and you’ll miss out on the colorful/dangerous characters that live side-by-side the students in an urban campus environment, but will you really care ten years later? Yes, in urban campuses you <em>can</em> walk to everything…in daylight. If I were a girl I <em>definitely</em> wouldn’t go to school in an urban campus, and I wouldn’t let my daughter either (if I had one).</p>

<p>Sorry, went-off-topic, but it does kind of go along with the late-night food options we were discussing. If your late-night food options are compromised by late-night crime, then it matters.</p>

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<p>@tomservo</p>

<p>That was very off-topic, but whatever, I will respond</p>

<p>1) What school do you go to?
2) The point of this thread is to see if opening such a restaurant would be a good business venture, but the comments seem to be wanting more variety, not the option itself.
3) I completely disagree with your post. Ok, I got to NYC, so I cant speak for your city, but NYC is completely safe; no one I know feels any threat. Also, convenience is a really big factor in many people’s decisions (and frankly, I don’t know anywhere that can compare to NYC, but you can prove me wrong if you can tell me of a place where I can grab a sandwich and beer within the time of a TV commercial, as well as a place where I can buy clothes, groceries, medicine, books, and a plethora of quick food (quick, ethnic food, not fast food) within every 4 block area).</p>

<p>As for danger of cities, it is overhyped due to media bias. That is, many crimes are committed due to connections with the criminal, so average people don’t have as much to worry about. I came to this conclusion after reading an anthropological work of New Haven, in which the author talks about how the fear that the rich feel towards the inner city is unfounded. I also live in Baltimore, one of the highest crime places, and face little danger from what is perceived. Yes some muggings happen, but just give the criminal your money; you probably won’t end up dying.</p>

<p>Also, in terms of city cost-of-living, I can only speak for NYC. However, the high cost-of-living that people attribute to NYC is false. That is, I think the bulk of that cost comes from accomadations, but that is resolved by the university. I also have many friends who pay 800$ a month for apartments with 4 or so roommates (they claim it is more spacious than NYU dorms, which are spacious compared to dorms of many colleges). 800 is expensive, but it isn’t as bad as people expect. Also, in terms of shopping, NYC has a lot of high-end shopping, which is why it gets the bias. However, there are many cheap places as well. H&M for example, is a cheap place and retains the cheap prices it has in the suburbs since it is a chain. Also, food is cheap. I’ve been to Panera Bread and places like that in teh suburbs of Baltimore, and some sandwhiches can cost 6$ or even 8$. Well, for 8$ I can get a burger meal at an actual restaurant, I can get middle eastern halal food, and I can get authentic japanese katsu made from actual japanese chef instead of mexican immigrants (not saying mexicans are inferior). The point is, NYC is only expensive if you want to live the “gossip girl” lifestyle; remember that NYC has a large wealth gap, so obviously the poor people are eating at places; and let me tell you, those places are better than food from the 'burbs. I don’t know if this applies to other cities, but I can only assume it does</p>

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<p>1) Delaware
2) We have a really good main street right off campus that delivers late at night so its really good late night options
3) yes.</p>

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<p>NYC is quite unique, you can’t really expect any one aspect of your campus neighborhood experience to match somebody else’s. And my fears of local crime are not unfounded, we get alerts via email any time a crime is committed on or near campus, and the neighborhood surrounding the East/South end of campus had a mugging/beating a day (sometimes more) last Winter Quarter until the cops stepped up their patrols. Towards the end, people were getting mugged inside campus buildings in broad daylight, I had my bike stolen.</p>

<p>As I said, the cops stepped up their patrols and we’ve been getting a lot less of these crime alerts, but the point is I’m not walking a few miles, dodging beggars, at 3 am for food, which is what I’d have to do to get to where most of my neighborhood’s late-night eating options are.</p>

<p>I go to a big state school in Ohio.</p>

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<p>I guess it doesn’t apply to your school, but I think my experience is more of the norm than yours in terms of urban college experiences. I walk around cities late at night alone all the time, and I travel to many cities so I have a broad experiences base</p>

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<p>I see we have a different baseline as to what’s cheap.</p>

<p>I was a pretty big fan of being a college student in Pittsburgh since a lot of places would do “late night” which was basically putting one category of their menu at half price from around 10 PM until 2 AM. Our school actually had dining options on campus open until 2 AM, as well, which was really nice when your schedule was all screwed up and you were still on the meal plan.</p>

<p>I’ve found Los Angeles to be not nearly as convenient. Prices are higher and places don’t stay open as late (At least, not in my town. I imagine there’s more options if I was in Hollywood). I can’t even say how excited I was to finally find a good Chinese restaurant with a $5 lunch special. Only issue is it’s a few miles away, so not really something I can easily grab for lunch (instead there’s $5 taco truck which isn’t bad).</p>

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<p>There’s an ample supply. Including a 24 hour Tim Horton’s/Cold Stone. Cold Stone at 3 am might be the best idea ever.</p>

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<p>Campusfood .com was the best thing ever when I was in school. You could log in and it would list a ton of restaurants and tell you which were open and if they were still delivering. I could get food until about 5am, then I would maybe have to wait a couple hours before things started opening up again for breakfast. I’d have starved without it! If your campus is on the site, I really recommend it.</p>

<p>Come to think of it, someone on here turned me onto it originally!</p>

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<p>my school is in a very residential neighborhood so there isn’t really anywhere to go if you don’t have a DD. If you do (or want to make lengthy middle-of-the-night bus treks), there are a handful of good places that are open 24 hrs. Mostly we just make our own food at 3 am, it’s much cheaper. I wish we had a 24 hour grocery store nearby, THAT would be far more convenient.</p>

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<p>SUNY Stony Brook, out on long island so as you can imagine the towns are pretty dead (coming from someone who came from NYC, though)</p>

<p>We have 2 dining halls open until 3 am, so thats pretty awesome. There is also a 24/7 Dunkin donuts and Dominos right across the street off campus. Anything else would require a car, which not so many people have. Popular choice for that would be a 24/7 diner about a 5-10 min drive away</p>

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<p>1) Wake Forest</p>

<p>2) We didn’t really have a ton of options but this year we’re expanding some stuff, so next year we should have more (like Shorty’s being open until 3 AM and Subway becoming a 24 hour restaurant). Our food hall closes at 9 PM though and the good stuff like Chick-Fil-A closes at 10. :frowning: We also have a sundry that closes at midnight, so you can always get something. </p>

<p>3) YES! Although we have a closed campus, so it would be difficult unless you drove.</p>