I spent a fair amount of time at the end of the summer puttering around New England in my Nisaan and visiting old high school buddies at their colleges. I slept on floors, in closets, under sofas, and managed to smuggle myself into just about every campus dining hall from here to Delaware, with a few exceptions in Pennsylvania due to a minor misunderstanding with some rather large, German cafeteria bouncers. Needless to say, I learned a few things. First, never underestimate the healing powers of a good chiropractor; and second, the food here at Dartmouth makes dining at other universities seem like airline quality rations.
I made this realization early on in my travels after biting into a crunchy grilled cheese in a Boston University cafeteria -- ok, any dining service that can't handle making a sandwich involving just two ingredients and a spatula should be prevented by law from attempting to make meatloaf. Unfortunately, they're not; which kind of makes you wonder about possible correlations to the school's growing vegetarian population.
Another thing I noticed, and I think this phenomenon is universal, concerns certain items that are almost impossible to get out of a vending machine. For example, not many people know this, but the Kit-Kat has actually been geometrically designed for the sole purpose of separating you from your money. The weight to surface area ratio has been so fashioned to permit the Kit-Kat to totter on the edge of the vending machine shelf even after your 60 cents has vainly tried to free it from the shackles that now mock your hunger. And no matter how tenuous its perch may seem, no amount of banging or kicking or launching of yourself from the neighboring coke machine will prove fruitful unless you happen to be a 300-pound line backer toting a crowbar.
When I was at the University of Connecticut, I tried to order a chicken sub plain -- no sauce, no onions. Not a terribly complex request. The grill guy just looked it me and said, "I can't do that. They come that way." Apparently, all their chicken subs are delivered every Tuesday afternoon on a chicken sub truck from the big chicken sub factory that pre-cooks and pre-packages each and every chicken sub with it's own share of sauce and its own supply of onions. The grill guy just thaws 'em in the microwave and sticks 'em in the oven for five minutes. So basically he just sits there with his apron and his hairnet punching "Power ... High ... Sub" into the microwave all afternoon -- the quintessential '90s chef.
All the other schools followed a similar trend in inedibility: all the cereal was stale, all the pizza soggy and all the bagels just slightly softer than lead and about as tasty. Not to mention that some of their employees were bonafied sociopaths. One of the cashier women at Villanova, who I just know has made multiple appearances on America's Most Wanted, placed some ancient gypsy curse on me in Pig Latin just because I didn't have exact change; quite a shock when you've grown accustomed to the zany antics of the Happy Hop guy.
Whatever your qualms may be about Dartmouth Dining Services, the bottom line is that as far as college dining services go, they're really pretty good. They have better selection and friendlier service, and for the most part, they cook things that rational people would actually put in their mouths voluntarily. This just isn't the case at a lot of other schools, and when you consider our size and our location, I think the quality of the food here is pretty impressive. So next time you find yourself complaining about soggy gravy fries, or the lack of deli meats at Collis, or the convoluted Dash system, just think of all my unfortunate friends who order take-out three times a day, eat vat-mac and cheese and would sell their roommates into slavery for a turkey melt on a bagel.
