I went to Goucher. The food was probably pretty standard: chicken in all forms, meatloaf, normal salad bar, Jello and pudding for dessert, etc. But it tasted great to me! My mother can’t cook, so it was nice to eat stuff that wasn’t burned or weird.
But the best part about college food was, I could have as much as I wanted! At home our portions were strictly controlled (bleah, like anybody would actually want seconds).
Also there was Steak Night! Once a month we got a nice sirloin and baked potato if we wanted it. There was only one allowed to a customer. But since there were several vegetarians I knew, I’d get their steak tickets and get a couple or three steaks. They ate whatever non-meat item was offered, I guess.
The food in the cafeteria as an undergrad was decent. Nothing great, but generally edible, and you could have all you wanted. They were big on things like “steak fingers” or “breaded pork chops” that were of dubious origin, but never killed anybody. Cereal was always available, and I think there was a salad bar of some type. If you didn’t like what they had, you could get a “grill pass” good for a burger & fries from the grill—a separate area from the main cafeteria, that also sold typical short-order stuff for cash. The catch was a grill pass was limited–and one burger/fries generally wasn’t enough.
For the most part, I really like the food at my university (Nova Scotia Agricultural College). We have a really small student body (<800) so the food isn’t made in huge quantities. It’s kind of hit or miss, but mostly hit. Sometimes the meat will be tough and I HATE the tettrazini, but sometimes there’ll be turkey or ham dinner for no reason that’s really good. Also, there’s always a sandwich bar, salad bar, cereal and stuff to toast (bagels, bread, english muffins).
The best nights are when they have what I’ve taken to calling “Choose You Own Adventure” meals. Pasta bar, Mongolian grill, fajitas, stuff like that where you choose the base and toppings and sauce. Oh, and on Sundays there’s a sundae bar.
Oh, another good part of our food service is it’s open all day, and if you go outside of meal hours they’ll make you something from a short order menu. You can go back as many times as you want, too.
At my school what the athletes got and what the regular schlubs got were two ends of the spectrum.
We pretty much had anything we wanted, any way we wanted, any time we wanted.
You want 3 raw eggs in orange juice at 6:43 every evening? They had it ready.
I had to explain what Scrapple was but by God they got it and cooked it right.
The 20,000 regular students had some of the most horrible stuff. My friends at Penn State and U of D ate much better.
By the way the food at Penn’s New Bolton Center is awesome.
I was a regular for my first year (i.e. first two semesters), as the meal plan was required of freshman. I’ve since moved off the meal plan, much to the benefit of my health, general well-being, nutrition, digestion, and overall life satisfaction.
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (CA), 1983-87. The food was okay. Nothing great, but not bad. They had two or three dining halls which ranged from pretty good to okay, but nothing was really abysmal. They also had a burger bar that made wonderful Canadian bacon and Swiss cheese burgers. All in all I’d say the experience was relatively positive, but I’m not that picky when it comes to food (as long as it’s not “weird”–I like boring meat and potatoes type stuff).
I go to Virginia Tech. We have the best food in the country. I can have good sushi, gourmet sandwiches, salads, quiches, barbeque, and many others – all for $2 each.
Gracie’s was mostly for Freshmen and the food wasn’t bad, but they served a lot of greasy meals. It was an AYCE buffet and had several different standard meals. Every once in awhile they’d have a sushi bar.
The Crossroads had a sub shop and “Chinese” food. It didn’t taste anything like standard restaurant Chinese food, and was really horrible. They did have a very good smoothie bar.
Java Wally’s- the library cafe, served great drinks. I practically lived off their stuff during finals week.
I can’t remember what the rest of the cafeterias served, but the food was fine, overall. I’m not a foodie though, so my standards aren’t incredibly high.
UCSD, late 1970s, Revelle Cafeteria. Breakfast was great and all the usual fare was offered–eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, cereal, etc., and you got as much as you wanted with your meal plan if you lived in the dorms. It’s about impossible to screw up when you are preparing eggs, bacon, and sausage.
Dinner could be anywhere from bleh to not bad at all depending on the menu; in general things like veggies tended to be overcooked and therefore I developed a taste for spinach and broccoli, since strong flavors like that can’t be boiled out completely. I had been okay with eating those things before, but now I really grew to like them a lot. Generally, the less skill is required to prepare a menu item, the better it was, so spaghetti and meat sauce was great, but chicken and steak not so much. Lots of times I would opt to use my meal credit at one of the other on-campus eating places instead. I couldn’t get all I wanted, but I could get enough. On the other hand, dinner at the cafeteria was more fun social-wise. Sometimes with a load of toke the humor could get bizarre and silly. There was this one guy called Mooney who was sort of a “class-clown” type. Once he was sitting across the table from me and without warning shoved a pile of beef-and-noodle dish from his plate onto my tray making a sort of “Bleah” sound, like the waitress in the Monty Python sketch when she’s asked for something without Spam in it. I might have been pissed if he’d put it on my actual plate, but since he put it on the tray I about pissed for real it seemed so funny at the time.
As for lunch, I virtually never ate lunch in the cafeteria, but used my meal credit elsewhere. It just wasn’t a pleasant place to eat in the middle of the day.
Breakfast was usually decent…eggs were a little runny for my taste, but otherwise it was fine. Rolls, sausage, juice, etc. and you can’t go too far wrong.
Lunch and dinner were usually half-okay: the carb part. I don’t think they ever caught the hang of fruits and vegetables (not counting potatoes, which are carb heaven). Good breads. The only entrée I remember looking forward to: tortellini in sauce and Italian sausage.
Oh, and good desserts. They made these fig bars that were fantastic. Had a crumb (streusel-esque) topping…really good.
UNM : the place was called La Posada, but everyone referred to it as Alpo Sloppo. The food was actually passable, if that means you don’t freak when you find a maggot in your breakfast cereal, and cruelly laughing at your roomate when she developes food poisoning is normal.
Also, there was another problem. I worked there and one night when I was assigned to the dishwashing hall, our football team had actually won a game. There was a massive celebration and the La Posada put on a feast for the victorious team, and by the time the football team was through there was garbage all over the dishroom floor. Then something went wrong with the dishwashing machine and an employee yelled “Niagra Falls!” Which resulted in the dishroom manager storming through the garbage yelling every swear in the book.
I went to Florida State University from 2002 to 2006.
At orientation (June 2002), we had meals in the cafeteria and the foodservice company running the operation was Sodexo. It was so bad that my mother was convinced that I could cook better stuff in the dorms and prepared me for such. (I had more cookware than all the other girls on my floor combined, but I made food well when I had money. When I didn’t, it was ramen noodles, eggs, and peas with multivitamins to supplement my diet.)
A year later, Aramark gets the food contract, and the food started improving by small bits. The cafeteria food still wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was edible and, on occasion, tasty.
By the time I was a junior and selling meal plans, they’d opened up a new cafeteria on one side of campus and were constructing one on the other side of campus. Food quality had improved immensely to the point where I could eat the food every day, but I generally wouldn’t want to, as it still wasn’t terribly healthy overall. By this time, though, I was living off campus and could cook for myself.
As of April 2006, the cafeteria food was pretty decent and there were some okay choices for fast food on campus, but nothing so amazing that I miss not having it around. Fried food was still popular, but it wasn’t the basis of the cafeteria meals any longer.
Food at UT-Austin was delicious! Ruby’s BBQ, Dirty’s, Bongo’s, man, all the great BBQ you could want right there in walking distance! I lived at Dobie, and the dorm food was shit. What they had one day was thrown in with something else the next day and voila! a new casserole! Most people took the elevator one level lower and ate Taco Bell. The Wendy’s at the Union was quite delicious, and fast as anything. Also, the frats all had great food, so most guys would have four or five takeout boxes stuffed full of food, and you would just go around to different apartments and see what people had.
I did eat at Jester once, which is supposed to be the biggest dorm in the country or something. Steamed hamburgers, salad bar, it was all edible.
Cal Poly, Pomona, 2000-2006. It wasn’t too bad actually. Better than the crap I ate at home in high school. Of course, I didn’t really have anybody to cook for me in high school, and my own cooking was (and still is) abysmal. I look back rather fondly at the selection we had there.
