While the new Hill Dining Center Marketplace promises more choices, the only variety to set it apart from past dining halls is in the number of stations: seven. Apart from a few creative dishes, the "marketplace"-style cafe has done little else but categorize and reintroduce the dining system's old menus.
Six of the stations — Grill on the Hill, World Palate, Homestyles, Hill Pizzeria, Good Grains and Just Desserts — are aesthetically placed around the exterior of the dining hall. Palmer Avenue Deli takes center stage in the thick of the lunchtime bustle. The combination of large windows and an open-air design provides diners a pleasant view of the activity on Palmer Field and the adjoining tennis courts.
But the most disappointing element of the new dining facility is the lack of innovation. A look at the campus dining website shows that there are only a handful more dishes on the Marketplace's menus than on other residence halls' menus. For a dining hall heralded as the revitalization of the University's dining system, I would expect more options.
And quality of the food ranges from hospital fare to moderately innovative, but much of it fails to rise above other the dining halls. The salad bar has similar and possibly fewer choices than when I dined daily in West Quad three years ago, which had Jello and syrupy fruit cocktail in the offering. The same whole fruits are also available, including many red delicious apples whose commercial wax coating still has not yet been washed off.
Despite much of the same old mediocrity, there were some stand out dishes. Starting with the Palmer Avenue Deli, where the walnut, red onion and raisin fusion salad combines flavors and textures for a satisfying crunch.
The strength of the onion and sweetness of the raisin were mirrored in another salad with shredded carrot, mandarin orange and sliced radish salad. Although I found some of the soups to be too salty, the pea and French onion soup with large pieces of cracked black pepper were very good.
But skip the chicken noodle, whose lacking flavor is only compensated with too much salt.
If there is any station to rave about, it's the Hill Pizzeria and its very own hearth oven. Aside from cheese and pepperoni pizza slices, the Hill Pizzeria features a third flavor combination daily. The roasted vegetable pizza stands out with rounds of summer squash and zucchini, chunky tomatoes, mushrooms and scallions, but it's the pesto chicken pizza, with its thick slices of tomato and fragrant basil pesto, that wins the day.
For the most part, I was not impressed with the Marketplace Homestyles dishes. This station resembles the type of food I would want to eat with my family — pasta and chicken dishes. Unfortunately, though, the dishes reveal themselves to be the typical dining hall fare I've tasted many times before. The pasta was overcooked and soggy, and the tomato-basil sauce tasted like it was slightly past its expiration date.
A new feature of the Marketplace worth of praise is the chicken rotisserie, which makes drumsticks tender and juicy. The browned skin adds a lot of flavor and moisture. But one piece of advice to the rotisserie crew: if you're going to showcase the chicken alongside a strand of rosemary, it should taste as if rosemary had actually been used in the preparation.
For those of you who would be happy with a burger and fries for every meal, you're in luck. The Grill on the Hill's menu barely changes.
The World Palate station does a decent job of showcasing other cultures' foods. It basically takes the vaguely ethnic dishes you'd find scattered around any other cafeteria and puts them in a corner. There was nothing new about the taco station, but I did enjoy a tofu dish I put together with Asian-style rice and a spicy soy garlic sauce.
Just Desserts scored above average — except for the chocolate mousse, which tasted as if it had been diluted with whipped cream. The three-layer strawberry cake had a surprisingly good strawberry-cream filling and the lemon bars showcased an appropriately sour lemon curd on top of a crumbly buttery crust. The cookies, which are baked fresh on the spot, are still warm when you bite into them.
Two additional features worthy of recognition are the spice rack and the self-service system. Across from the salad bar you will find a rack of twenty spices and an array of condiments like olive oil and red wine vinegar. The new self-service idea of the Marketplace allows students to control for portion size and taste preferences. Perhaps we'll find that regular Marketplace diners waste less and avoid a few pounds of the freshman fifteen because of it.
The Marketplace wins points for style and a few new dishes, but in the end it's still a dining hall.