For the main course: apple and cranberry crepe flambé or braised beef with root vegetables served in a blueberry wine reduction. Then for dessert, chocolate zucchini cake or a slice of pie made with fresh Maine blueberries.
Diners enjoy their meals atop rich hardwood tables complete with cloth napkins and vases filled with fresh flowers from the school’s garden. The floor-to-ceiling windows look out to a campus buzzing with activity.
These are the offerings of Thorne Dining Hall at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, a college cafeteria that could be mistaken for a four-star restaurant if it weren’t for the twice-daily patronage of customers who pay with their student ID cards.
Bowdoin has long been a leader in fine cafeteria cuisine. The University of Michigan has not. But Bowdoin’s dining system isn’t just a gratuitous favor to its students. Universities are funneling money into deluxe amenities in the hopes that plush dorm rooms will put them above the competition in the hearts, minds and stomachs of prospective students.
Any resident of Markley Residence Hall could tell that the University has never based its pride on its dining halls, which provide waffle irons where Michigan State University might place cinnamon bun chefs. But the recently opened Hill Dining Center blows away the rest of campus’s cafeterias for atmosphere and variety, suggesting the University administration has realized it has to play catch up to stay competitive.
“It all points to national trends at schools and colleges to provide more contemporary facilities, to meet the expectations of current students, and to anticipate the needs of future students,” University Housing spokesman Peter Logan said.
The Princeton Review surveys more than 150,000 college students coast to coast to monitor which campus’s pizza is cooked to perfection and which serves mystery meat in the name of Salisbury steak. While the University’s dining system isn’t listed among the 20 worst, it’s definitely not among the 20 best, either.
Logan said the University’s dining system only aspires to keep up with the typical standard for campus eats.
“I wouldn’t say that we’re at the cutting edge here, because there are some universities and schools that have been investing in their residential and dining facilities sooner than we have,” Logan said. “I would say we’re probably in the middle of where universities are trying to go in terms of providing more contemporary residential and dining experiences.”
Connected to the rear of Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall, Hill Dining Center features marketplace-style service stations, like a stone pizza oven and a wok kitchen, two stories of seating and wall-sized windows looking out to Palmer Field. Resembling additions at University of California at Los Angeles, Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, the $65 million project is the first cafeteria added to campus since Bursley Residence Hall opened in 1967.
The Hill Dining Center is the first piece of the Residence Life Initiative, a plan created in 2004 for a campus-wide facelift intended to provide students living on campus a better quality of life. The next phase of the plan will be realized when the $175 million North Quad residence hall opens in 2010. The new dorm will have a similar marketplace style dining hall and offer residents suite-style living.
According to some current students, the ambience of the new dining center is a big step forward, but the food — well, that still leaves a little to be desired.
“It’s a totally new building and totally new everything here, and it almost feels like you’re in a restaurant, so when I came here I was in that sort of mode,” LSA sophomore Scott Templin said. “And then I got my food and I was like ‘Oh wait, it’s just dorm food,’ so it’s sort of a psychological effect.”
But while brightly colored trays and dishes, multi-level seating and natural lighting add serious presentation points to fresh rotisserie chickens and spinach tofu, the important thing is how everything tastes. Templin added that although the selection is much larger, “the food is just the same as most other (cafeterias).”
Stone-oven pesto pizza is a far cry from what University upperclassmen remember of their dining hall experiences, but the recipe for luring students with picky pallets is far from perfect –– especially when Virginia Tech University has New York strip steaks that are cut and grilled to order and a tank filled with whole Maine lobsters available seven days a week.
Long before the University of Michigan deigned to cater to students’ comfort with the Residence Life Initiative, other universities were serving their students restaurant cuisine on a Ramen noodle budget.
Rick Johnson, director of dining services at Virginia Tech, said students can afford high-end eats because their meal plans work like a debit card.