Survival Guide 2005: On-Campus Food Reviews

The Bleacher Club: Once upon a time, there was a salad bar. And one of the sweetest human beings to grace the kitchens of our university, Penny the Pasta Lady. Unfortunately, neither can be found at the Bleacher Club any longer (Update: Penny the Pasta Lady has reappeared at Bleacher Club!), but there’s plenty of mediocre food, long lines, rowdy frat brothers and athletes, and Papa Joe’s Pizza which is OK at best, and rubbery at worst, and insanely overpriced (if available at all). The grill makes a decent tuna melt and grilled cheese, and the heroes are good (again, when available), and when Penny is serving pasta, you can be sure you will get good food and be served with a smile, but for most other items, try the SAC. Rating: 3/5, but only because of Penny.

Campus Connection @ H-Quad: Food food food. This seems to be the mind of a college student. Throw a couple of sex’s in that mantra, and it’ll really be dead on. Where to eat on a college campus is the almightiest of decisions. Pick the wrong place, and you’ll be clinging to a porcelain wormhole for the rest of the night. Campus Connection @ H-Quad is one of those hit-or-miss places. Half of it is good, and half of it is…well…I’ll leave it to your imagination. Campus Connection offers a variety of classics, a grill section, a salad/soup/sandwich area, and a Taco Bell Express. The classics are good and bad…you’ll have to go with gut-instinct here on what to eat. The grill is easily the best part, where you can get fries, chicken fingers, burgers and the like. H-Quad also offers pre-made sandwiches and salads, which are sometimes good, and sometimes too old to be eaten. You can easily tell which salad/sandwich falls into what category. They also offer soups from Au Bon Pain, which are great. The Taco-Bell is sort of alright. It doesn’t taste like real Taco Bell, but since it’s open until 11pm, it’ll do. It’s not awful and it’s not great. The only odd thing is the weird time schedule, and the wrap/soup/salad/pizza place Sandella’s is only open in the afternoons, every other week. Overall, H-Quad is an alright place to eat. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Rating: 3/5.

Delancey Street Deli – The newest addition to the campus dining scene, Delancey Street replaces the old Papa Joe’s Pizza (which relocated within the Bleacher Club across the hall in the Union), and also replaces the former Kosher dining establishment in Roth Quad. Delancey Street brings a taste of old New York to taste buds near you. Fresh, made-to-order sandwiches, hot soups, deli salads, knishes, potato pancakes and a nice selection of freshly-made entrees such as baked meatloaf and roasted chicken make this place an immediate winner. Also, all foods will be 100% certified Glatt Kosher, the only establishment of its kind in Suffolk County. Like Jasmine, it is a bit pricier, but you get what you pay for. A welcome addition to Campus Dining, and definitely worth a try. Rating: 5/5

Free Food: How most commuters at the Press and Independent nourish themselves. There are always activities going on, and if you’re on the ball you’ll never have to spend a dime on food. Walk into the Business-Technology open house and say you’re considering changing your major. Take a couple pamphlets, a course listing, and then stack up three plates of catered heroes, cookies, and soda. Then bolt like there’s no tomorrow. This process can be transgressed into all types of free food conventions. You just gotta know where they are, and when to get to them. Too much free food may be a problem if you live on campus and are thus anchored to a meal plan, as free food will prevent you from using up your points, causing you to spend the 450 points you have left over at the end of the semester on 40-dollar boxes of jelly beans and marshmallow fluff from the Kelly Deli. Rating: 5/5 if you’re a commuter.

The End of the Bridge – An actual restaurant on campus. Yes, I’ll say it again: an actual restaurant on campus. If you want to actually sit down and have someone wait on you and get appetizers and drinks and entrees, and occasionally hear really loud people be really loud, this is the best place to be. They aren’t very expensive, but they’re not notably cheap, either. Try the Buffalo wings. Simply to-die-for. Very nice place to eat and spend more than an hour in. Plus there’s big-screen televisions.

Where am I? I’m located on the second floor of the Union, at the West end. Once you enter, you will forget immediately that you were ever in the Union, or even on campus. Rating: 4/5.

Hospital: Yeah, baby! The Hospital is where all the medical students shell out mega bucks for their education, and the payoff is that they get some really good food. In the hospital cafeteria you’ll find selections of a somewhat higher quality than the rest of campus. Maybe it’s just the more professional atmosphere, I dunno. But if you live in Roth Quad or are just coming out of classes in Javits or the Life Sciences building, you might want to head east across Nicholls Road (don’t worry, there’s an underpass) and check out the Hospital eateries once in a while. It’s a bit of a walk, but you won’t regret it.
Rating: 5/5 .

Kelly Coffee & Tea House – Absolutely the niftiest place to go on campus. It’s like a Starbucks, except not as artsy-fartsy and you don’t see struggling New York City actors strapping on their messenger bags and adjusting their non-prescription glasses while straightening the legs of their corduroys and reading the works of Sartre cross-legged with a cappuccino and a single napkin on the table. This place is much better than that, especially when you sit up on the high chairs and feel social and important. Plus, if there’s a person sitting in the high chair alone, you can laugh at him. Quietly, though. Don’t hurt his feelings.

Greatest things to get:
Anything cold. The best examples are as follows:

The Mocha Frappuccino. Simply the greatest thing ever invented by anybody.
The Coconut Frappuccino. Simply the second greatest thing ever invented by anybody.

You’ll find this place on the first floor of the Kelly Dining Hall.

Rating: 5/5

Kelly Dining Center: Probably the finest residential dining hall on campus. Boasting a deli that prepares made-to-order sandwiches and salads, as well as cereal, milk, canned foods, ramen noodles, pasta, candy and other things to make your teeth rot, it is a favorite of students, especially since it is open until 3 a.m. The rest of the dining center features pizza, fried chicken, mediocre Mexican (which, however, is still better than the campus Taco Bell), a salad bar, stir-fry, and a “carving board,” featuring such items as roast turkey and meatloaf, but only open for four hours each evening. Overall, there is a lot of variety and blows Roth and H-Quad away. Rating: 4/5.

Jasmine: Eat here! Now! This place has the best food on campus, without a doubt. Ever since it moved into the Wang Center last year, students and faculty have given it rave reviews. The sushi is a bit better than the stuff you find on the rest of campus—I still say fresh is best though. There are several stations serving Indian, Thai, and Chinese entrees. There’s even a Japanese hibachi station where you can get tasty meats fresh off the grill. I recommend the Indian food in particular, especially the korma and the vegetable bhaja. It’s great for all you vegetarians out there or for those of you who just want something a little more exotic than fried rice. But the yellow egg noodles at the Thai station are delicious too. And not only is the main eating area clean and well kept, the outdoor eating area is beautiful and has a relaxing natural atmosphere. Just a warning; the prices are expensive so don’t go overboard; you have a limited number of meal plan points you can spend there. Rating: 5/5.

Roth Food Court: I seriously pray that you respect yourselves and your bodies enough to avoid this place. Like the plague. Unless you like spending quality time hunched over a toilet bowl after an unappetizing meal of dried-up baked ziti, low-quality Burger King (if that was possible), “Egg” “Drop” “Soup” that smells like a rotting corpse and other “Chinese” “Food” from Deng Lee’s (the name of the establishment being the only thing not requiring the use of quotations), or imitation Pizza Hut. They do deliver though, but so do many places off campus, and you would be a fool to choose Deng Lee’s over Jasmine. Cut this out and paste this where you can see it. We’re that serious. Rating: 0/5.

Student Activities Center: The most convenient choice for students to eat on campus and probably the most variety. Possibly too convenient. The lines here can be very, very long at times, and they still inexplicably do not accept meal plans between 11:40ish and 2:20 on most days. The pizza here is rather good though and usually made fresh, and if you’re patient enough for a (usually) long wait in line, Philly’s has some fine, if artery-clogging, Philly Cheesesteaks. Mr. Food’s wraps are also delicious, and he’s quickly replacing Penny the Pasta Lady as the most beloved Campus Dining employee. There’s also soups, sushi, stir fry (sometimes), and a salad bar of varying quality. Try coming here before noon or later in the evenings, to avoid the crowds. Rating: 3/5.

Student Union Deli: The Union Deli is terrible. The price you pay for, say, orange juice, like all prices on campus make God weep his mighty tears. Eating at the Union Deli is like being trapped in Groundhog Day without Bill Murray. Just that guy that says “It’s a da-hoo-zee!” The food is not so great. The BLT is sometimes awesome, when the bacon isn’t cold and hard like God’s mighty eye crust when he’s suffering from dangerously low coldness. Except that very same BLT is grotesquely expensive. You used to be able to counter-scam them by ordering a lettuce and tomato sandwich and a side of bacon, and it came out to, like, half the price of a BLT. Go figure. But we think they got wise to that. Rating: 2/5.

Weekend Brunch: If you’re really hungry on weekends, this is the place to go. On Saturdays and Sundays you can head over to the quad dining halls in Benedict, Roth, and Kelly for weekend brunch. It’s a good deal because it’s $7 and it’s buffet-style all-you-can-eat. The staff are rather stingy with the servings because of some insane rationing policy, but you can go up to the counters as many times as you like so it’s no big deal. I suggest stuffing your face until you look and feel like a pregnant woman so you can get your money’s worth. There are a few drawbacks though. The food isn’t very vegetarian friendly and it features a lot of fattening foods—not good if you’re trying to avoid the “Freshman 15”. And you’re not allowed to take food out with you, so if you’re planning on sneaking some fruit out for later consumption (which we suggest you do because it’s expensive otherwise), you’d better be covert about it. Rating: 3/5.