<p>Current students... describe your dining hall food to us! Your provider, Bon Appetit, is coming to Penn next year and we all want to know if it's actually good food or not so that we can decide on a meal plan.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>IMO, it’s really good food. I was shocked to visit friends at other schools and realize most schools have terrible campus food.
Since one of our main student centers was just demolished (or will be soon, as a replacement has been built all year), we no longer have any cafeteria-style eating- it’s all stations. Ie a pizza station, pasta, mexican, asian, pasta, a grill, a fryer station, etc. (We have three places on campus like this- 2 in dorm areas, one on main campus). (It was like this before, but with one cafeteria).
There’s also a bunch of cafes- one in the library that has coffee and dessert-type food, and a few others.
There’s also this one place on campus that has great carvery.
Oh, and I love love love the smoothies.</p>
<p>No idea how Penn will set it up, but that’s how it’s done at WashU.
It’s very overpriced though…</p>
<p>OMGSMOOTHIESOMG. Thanks for the detailed response… I find this embarrassingly exciting!</p>
<p>It’s a bit expensive but you get what you pay for, that’s for sure!
I’ve heard that the staff is very helpful and friendly and will practically make anything you want if you ask for it.</p>
<p>I just wanted to say that Penn is all you can eat.
I’m sure they aren’t changing this because the meal plans are the same as in previous years. (so I guess it’s not more expensive even though I think it’s like 12 bucks).</p>
<p>omelet station ftw! (even if it is demolished now…)
yeah the food is great, although if the meal system there is anything like ours, it’s probably better to get fewer mealpoints at first and add on as you go.</p>
<p>IMO, the food is excellent, though pricey. There’s crepes and hummus and other rather delicious things. There were a lot of flavors of hot chocolate- I liked the strawberry white chocolate.</p>
<p>the food is great! most of the individual stations will have specials, too. so, the latino option will have a special every day, in addition to the usual things it has. there is lots of variety. the bon appetit company seems to place a lot of importance on organic and sustainable food serving options (buying local, cage free eggs, farm raised fish) which is great.</p>
<p>i disagree with the over-priced comments, though. “over priced” is repeated by most people on campus, admittedly, but i don’t really understand why people think that wy. you can get a solid meal with 2 sides for like 6 bucks, and most other options cost between 5 and 6 bucks, it seems. this would cost MUCH more money if you went off campus. considering the quality of the food, i think the food here is extremely well priced. getting a steak+shrimp, the occasional lobster tail, or a couple orders of the fresh-made sushi is going to be more expensive, clearly, but you don’t eat that every day. </p>
<p>my favorite part has got to be the hundreds of soup options :)</p>
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<p>While local may be all fine and dandy, the new “local” bagels they switched to a few months ago are nastier than nasty. And I live off of bagels, so it’s very upsetting.
Though if this is my only complaint I clearly don’t have much to complain about.</p>
<p>is bon apetit currently unique to WashU?
I was denied at Penn so not sure how ecstatic I am that they’re getting our quality of food :P</p>
<p>Now now nooob, none of that. Besides, Wash U is better ;). I know Bon Apetit is based out of the San Francisco area, so I would have to assume they have the business at schools out that way. Besides, they couldn’t be a viable company if Wash U was their only customer. The economics just don’t work.</p>
<p>Bon App</p>
<p>Ah, cool. I have friends going to American, Case, Northwestern, and Oberlin. I didn’t know we’d have the same dining experience.</p>
<p>I only chose WashU over Penn because of the food. Ahhh!</p>
<p>Kidding. Although I bet there are a lot of food cart owners not too excited.</p>
<p>Yeah, star_s, Wash U dorms are still way nicer. LOL.</p>
<p>One thing that I think hasn’t been mentioned is that Bon Apetit, though standardized in business practices (with respect to all of their green nonsense and whatnot) does not produce equal quality food at every institution. I say this as somebody who started over at CWRU (which uses them), and who is now at WashU. Having talked this over with several other friends who made that same switch (because WashU is a fairly popular school for Case refugees), it seems that the consensus is they’ve done a good job at WashU, where they were very mediocre at Case. And I know certainly the menu we have here is considerably more diverse, and includes a number of more expensive items (like steak and lobster) than it did at Case. And that is to say nothing of the dining facility hours (so much better here). My suspicion is that the Penn experience will be closer to that of WashU, but I mention this simply because from experience I think the question is problematic.</p>
<p>Macalester also uses Bon Appetit. I really haven’t had any complaints though I will get tired of the food after several months of the same thing. We had great hours at Bear’s Den but we will see what happens now on the South 40. </p>
<p>The cafeteria by the dorms had a tacqueria, pizza station, a salad bar, a grill, a fryer, a pasta bar and a sandwich station. We also had access to cereals by the bowl. Food was great almost all the time unless it was cold chicken tenders and soggy fries. You could pick up a chicken sandwich, hamburger, veggie burger, and specials like steaks, lobsters and various fishes from the grill. The fryer had wings, tenders and ravioli. </p>
<p>We had the 3rd best food in the country a few years back. From personal experience visiting other colleges around the country, we’ve got really good food.</p>