The New Dorm Food

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Food for thought
Sophisticated dining habits spur local universities to offer cooked-to-order meals to lure prospective students.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Mark Marchant loves the cooked-to-order Asian stir-fry, burritos, and most of all, the mushroom and cheddar omelet s that beckon him to breakfast after just five hours of sleep. Every day, he eats at least twice in the establishment that caters to all his culinary desires -- the dining hall in his Boston University dormitory. </p>

<p>"I love my mom, I love her cooking, but it just wasn't, 'oh, I can't wait,' the way I feel here," said the 19-year-old freshman from Florida, of the dining hall in Warren Towers on Commonwealth Avenue.</p>

<p>Boston University and other local universities are at the forefront of a revolution in campus food across the country. Their dining hall chefs are making food to order, a logistical accomplishment when catering to the individual tastes of thousands of customers a day. Forget mystery meat and soggy pasta. The students pick from a variety of gourmet, ethnic, and locally grown menus.</p>

<p>Colleges have been sprucing up their dining hall offerings to compete for prospective students, whose tastes have become increasingly sophisticated. Used to eating in restaurants, students demand lots of fresh, piping hot options, and they're finding them not just at BU, but also at Northeastern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.</p>

<p>At UMass, students can get all-you-can-eat, made-to-order sushi and customized pho, Vietnamese noodle soup. Northeastern is considering a tandoori oven and a tossed-to-order salad bar for a future dining hall.</p>

<p>BU renovated two dining halls in the last few years, creating open kitchens and made-to-order stations. It is thinking about closing its three remaining traditional dining halls and replacing them mainly with one facility in the new style.

[/quote]

<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/10/food_for_thought/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/10/food_for_thought/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>DS lived on West Campus and ate in one of those dining halls. The food was great (we thought). He did say that after a while, the variety became a bit blah. But the preparation was great. There were many "made to order" stations, and everything was fresh and wonderful. In particular, the Sunday brunch was great. Also, another thing BU does periodically is they bring in chefs from restaurants who prepare "special" meals...like lobster. DS would agree, the food was terrific for a large dining hall feeding 1500 or more students per day.</p>

3

<p>""I love my mom, I love her cooking, but it just wasn't, 'oh, I can't wait,' the way I feel here," said the 19-year-old freshman from Florida, of the dining hall in Warren Towers on Commonwealth Avenue."</p>

<p>These days, the college experience certainly is dishing out a tantalizing array of culinary choices both for those kids with a sophisticated palate as well as those with a yen for a taste of home - it looks like the way to a student's heart/mind is through the stomach.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=270697%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=270697&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

4

<p>Anyone (besides me) remember lots of canned glop, like pudding, or when a "salad bar" was iceberg lettuce and canned mushrooms? I even worked in food service a year, and was amazed at the awful food we served (and we all ate, and still gained the Freshman 20)....</p>

<p>This new age college food is so tanatalizing...particularly in comparison to my memory of dorm food.</p>

5

<p>DD's college has an excellent food plan also. Theirs is a completely "eat as you go" plan. You get points which are used to pay just for what you are buying to eat. There are no 9 meal per week, or 14 meal per week plans. Just points. It's very nice because if you're only buying a bagel and juice, you aren't paying for a full meal. They have a hot meal (kind of like the olden days), but stations for pasta, salad, sandwiches, tex-mex, asian, omelettes, etc. She says it's good. Plus the college buys only locally grown fresh produce (CA...not hard to do), and meats and fish that are raised in an environmentally sound way. </p>

<p>And yes, I remember the olden days. My favorite was when they would have liver and creamed chip beef as the two main choices on the same day. Let's face it...if there had been another choice, they would NEVER have gotten rid of the liver (which was actually good), and the beef. We had something called "rainbow beef". I think it might have been thinly sliced roast beef, but it had a rainbow "hue" on it. Blech.</p>

6

<p>Food is my son's biggest complaint. Dinner is served family style. One night dinner was french toast & eggs. He was not a happy camper. Lunch is what saves him since there are lots of choices for lunch. Breakfast is grab some cereal & fruit from the kitchen. I sometimes think if he'd known how much he'd dislike the food at his school he would have accepted MIT's offer!</p>

7

<p>My school has made-to-order food stations for pasta, global (Mexican, Cuban, etc.), Asian, waffles, sandwiches/wraps, and grill items. On some days they'll also make salads for you (like a chicken ceasar salad). The lines tend to take a bit longer, but the food is good, and since you can see it being prepared you can trust it a little more. As with anywhere, I think, even good food can become dull if the options are similar every day. I'm glad that I never have to worry about having good food in college. Besides the made-to-order foods, they also have a really nice salad bar, Kosher section, cereal, and two areas with different home-style meals (more like a conventional dining hall, though they still serve you the food). It's easier to deal withn dining requirements, allergies, and personal tastes in a dining hall like this, too.</p>

8

<p>S raves about the food at school and it is ranked # 7 by The Princeton Review.</p>

9

<p>"I love my mom, I love her cooking,"</p>

<p>actually that is our 'hook' for him to come home to.</p>

10

<p>UCLA is supposed to rank number 2 in dorm food and my D likes it but says that she's getting tired of it and wants some 'home cooking' which I believe really means food from 'local' Mexican and Chinese restaurants as opposed to food cooked at home.</p>

11

<p>I had good food in college, including the occasional special meal. My wife liked it too. No institutional glop at all.</p>

<p>But my daughter was glad to move off campus into her own apartment, in part so that she could make better food.</p>

12

<p>ucla dad, my DS has already given me the list of take out places he needs to go to over Christmas. In my house anything I actually go get (including local Mexican restaurants) IS considered home cooking :)</p>

13

<p>My first night home my family went to our favorite local Mexican place! I like this similarity.</p>

14

<p>A lot of my friends HATE my school's food, but I love it. I can get freshly grilled fish for lunch and dinner with a side salad and/or one of the other sides they have. Or I can have a burrito which certainly isn't Chipotle or Moe's, but isn't shabby..</p>

<p>In fact, I think almost everything I eat at my school is made to order. Granted, the variety can suck and I end up eating the same 4 or 5 things all the time, but it's not horrible. And you can't beat a Usdan Smoothie.</p>