Last Saturday when we were eating at Jet's Pizza, we discussed my love for college "all you can eat" cafeterias, so my son suggested I should show up some day and eat at his dining hall which he finds okay but nothing so special. I quickly agreed and we soon decided I would show up on Thursday to eat at the Griesedieck Dining Hall. We had eaten there before during a campus tour, but that is when it was run by Chartwell's, and now that Aramark was running the place I wanted to see if it had improved.
It was a warm and humid Thursday morning at I walked from the Grand Metrolink station north up Grand towards the giant Griesedieck tower. There were lots of students walking up and down Grand between the two campuses, and I tried to stay in the shade as much as I could as I texted my son to notify him of my progress.
I met him in front of the building facing the main quad where he informed me I should not go inside the building so I did not look like some creepy stalker. So I stood in the shade and admired the skylights on the top of the dining hall until he could wait for an elevator to come down and meet me. He did not understand why I wanted to eat at Gries instead of going to his favorite campus eatery, the Grille Works, where he eats his daily hamburger. But he did once he saw me eat everything that I ate:
1) Baked Chipotle Orange Chicken: It was juicy and tender meat, with a generous topping of sauce and a good hearty flavor to the meat.
2) Spicy Meatball Flatbread: Not very spicy at all so I added crushed pepper, but the meat was flavorful and the crust was not too bad.
3) Turkey Taco Panini: It was cold and just sitting there but I had to try it. The meat was actually pretty tasty and I did not mind that it was cold. I was probably supposed to heat it up somewhere.
4) Tomato & Bacon Grilled Cheese sandwich: This was warm and quite good with crisp bacon and generous and moist tomatoes. My son had picked up the plain non-bacon version first, but went back and got bacon ones. That is what you can do at an "all you can eat" cafeteria!
5) Roasted potatoes: They were just okay and needed extra salt and pepper. They had served me too much so I just discarded some of them. Potatoes are cheap!
6) Brownie: It was just okay but I still ate it.
My son just had some pepperoni pizza and the grilled cheese sandwiches and some milk after I reminded him he should! They had a ton of drink options so I had two different kinds of juice. They had an ice cream machine which I was going to try after my brownie, but I could tell my son was getting tired of waiting for me as I kept eating more and more. I noticed the solitary fellow sitting alone at the table next to us must have grabbed four plates of food. (He was there before we started and joined later by a few other hungry looking guys who just kept eating.) This is definitely the place for hungry college students. I will have to admit the quality of the food was just okay, but the variety was endless as was the supply.
My son had never actually been inside the P.O.D. before and we were both impressed how many different things were available for purchase inside the store (ice cream, milk, frozen meals, tons of snacks.) After walking around campus a little bit he headed off towards his classroom as I wandered around campus before heading back down Grand to the Metrolink station to head to that other university just a few stations west. Nothing like a little walk on a hot day after consuming four different entrees at a college cafeteria. It made me want to work at a college campus all my life, but wait a second... I do!
Food Quality:
Fun of Eating at a College Cafeteria:
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