With his earring, facial scruff and fastidiously unkempt hair, this Collis customer fell somewhere between a pirate and Mensa-member Geena Davis's character in "Cutthroat Island." Here on land, four clementines is an excessive amount to consume in a single sitting. So the only logical conclusion I could draw was that he was using Collis as a grocery store stand-in.
Capitalizing on the convenience of Dartmouth Dining Service establishments is far from unusual. Despite price markups only cents below those faced by hungry airport travelers, students too lazy or without a car to go to a real grocery story continue to purchase their $4.65 Odwallas with impunity.
Considering this, I began to wonder what other functions our eating establishments served. Is food the only thing consumed at The Hop, Collis, Home Plate, Pavilion, Food Court, Lone Pine or, dare I say, Cafe North?
After doing a little empirical research, the answer I've come to is a resounding "No".
As time-pressed individuals, Dartmouth students often eat meals with friends as a means of spending time together. Whether this entails scheduling breakfast, lunch or dinner or -- owing to the mall size of our campus and predictability of our friends' eating preferences -- simply showing up and expecting to see someone we know, dining at Dartmouth bears a striking resemblance to high school.
And, reminiscent of our middle school days, eating in a Dartmouth dining establishment also means checking out other people. While most of Dartmouth's dining halls offer a fair amount of people-watching, there is one that reigns as king of face time: FoCo.
In spite of everything you were brought up to believe about the impoliteness of such indiscrete attention, there are certain places on campus which allow us to stare freely without fear of social castigation.
Hooters thrives on the encouragement and acceptance of ogling. Patrons size up every woman who walks past, not because they necessarily think they're all attractive, but because the atmosphere is conducive to leering.
In Hanover, we do not have Hooters. We have FoCo.
As is natural in a more progressive environment such as Dartmouth, we are not limited by gender in our gaping but equal-opportunity oglers -- everyone is scrutinized.
The aisle through the center of Food Court -- better known by its nickname, "the FoCo runway" -- is held in questionable esteem, and the reaction it produces varies according to the class year, gender and extracurricular involvement of the student. You know, along with personal differences.
"The FoCo runway is a huge reality that has to be taken into account every single time you go there," Sarah Grossman, '11 noted. "I usually -- well, it depends on how I'm looking if I really want to walk down there or not. Sometimes I might just duck out to the left."
Others, like Daneille Devlin '12, view the route by the tray drop-off as "too obvious," but acknowledge the inevitability of certain effects brought on by a center-aisle route. "You can't be by yourself when you go to FoCo. You have to pretend like you're testing someone or doing something so you don't look by yourself, so you don't look like that loner, you know?"
When asked if she ever ate alone, Devlin's answer was a sober, "No, not at FoCo."
To discover whether the FoCo runway is a reality that endures outside the heads of those shuffling down the catwalk, I went to the most common source of anxiety for underclassmen women: the groups of athletes clustered on the "runway's" sides.
"I absolutely, 100 percent think that it exists," varsity rower Quincy Darbyshire '11 said of the FoCo runway, as his teammate, seated nearby, added, "There is definitely scoping."
Nick Giometti '11 even admitted his reluctant participation in the exercise.
"You are inadvertently part of the runway -- after crew practice when I'm gross and haven't showered: spectacle. When I'm sitting: spectator," he said. "Athletic teams tend to sit with each other -- crew team here, hockey over there, football back there ... it just happens."
Other athletes confirmed the furtive glances at runway victims are more than an arbitrary exercise in observation.
"It's mostly just people you think are really good or really bad looking. Or people you know," his teammate added, when asked which types of individuals merited comment.
While the runway looms large in the FoCo experiences of underclassmen, there is hope that its grip on the psyche does wane with age.
"I don't like FoCo because it seems like a bazaar all the time -- it's not quiet enough for me," Avnish Gungadurdoss '09 said.
With a solid group of friends, the need to people-watch seems unnecessary for Gungadurdoss.
"I used to like it, but I guess, becoming a senior, you just have your thing going on and you don't want to be out there all the time," he said. "You want to be with your friends when you're with your friends -- not distracted."
Many younger Dartmouth students, however, seem not to have experienced this decrease in cafeteria anxiety.
"You can sort of tell who are upperclassmen because it's way more cliquey," Satoshi Harris-Koizumi '12 said. "They have their really good group of friends while '12s are still trying to figure out where they fit in."
The blogger behind newly-created blog "ilovefoco," and a connoisseur of Dartmouth cafeteria fare, attributed FoCo's iconic place in the Dartmouth experience to its ability to satisfy cravings more compelling than gossip.
"The food at FoCo is worth defending -- things like the Muffalato satisfy a certain craving ... a certain carnal desire," he said. "It just so happens that the carnal desire for much of that food comes around 12:45 a.m. after four games of pong."
But why is FoCo the best of Dartmouth's eating establistments I asked?
"While Home Plate is healthy, Collis is crunchy (despite those plastic utensils), and The Hop is for jocks," he said. "FoCo embodies a certain mystique."
Despite the magnetic pull that FoCo wields over students on Wednesday and Friday nights, there is a trend among students who define themselves as "health-conscious" to favor Collis.
By noting the use of plastic utensils in Collis, however, the blogger brought to light an oft-ignored irony of our "crunchy" dining hall. Collis is not as sustainable as one might be led to believe, despite the packs of DOC members permanently seated on the couches.
A cookie from Collis isn't healthy just because it's labeled "vegan," as pasta is not gourmet simply because it contains "sun-dried" tomatoes; it's still made of sugar and carbohydrates.
A sophomore girl, who wished to remain anonymous, said that her reasons for going to Collis have more to do with the atmosphere than the food itself.
"Collis is a more female-dominated social space, so I just feel more comfortable " like at FoCo I feel like you have to look good and be prepared to see athletes," she said. "At Collis you know you can see your girlfriends or gay guys, and, you know, we're all friends here."p
On the other hand, some, like Rebecca Wall '11, scoff at the idea of "atmosphere" existing at any DDS facility.
"Using ambience and DDS in the same sentence seems odd; the physical locations seem essentially utilitarian, despite the attempt to jazz up FoCo with the now-infamous TV," Wall said.
She too acknowledged a preference for Collis, though.
"Breakfast there is a delight, and although dinner can be repetitive, the pasta and stir-fry are unmatched by FoCo offerings such as 'pork tikka masala,'" Wall said.
However widespread Collis' popularity, Home Plate's grill indisputably offers the most health-conscious options. Students can even order grilled salmon there, one of the three food items Dr. Mehmet Oz, Oprah's preferred medical authority, says will make you live longer. And, at the Home Plate grill, they never blink if you ask for a bunless buffalo burger.
Home Plate also is rumored to have a more "intimate" setting than other eating establishments, owing to its booth set-up.
When asked where she would tell her friend a big secret, an '11 female replied, "If you're going to tell your friend your period is late, you're going to do it in Home Plate, duh. Never FoCo."
However, many Dartmouth women said they wouldn't consider dinner at Home Plate a date -- no matter how flavorful the sesame crusted salmon may be. Sorry, gentlemen, your parents being directly instrumental in funding your love conquests just isn't sexy.
But does the wood of the booths at Home Plate really insulate your conversation from falling into the overheard section of this illustrious publication? East Wheelock Snack Bar employee, Owen Jennings, '11, said no.
"I eat at Home Plate because of the chicken. It's got nothing to do with booths," he said. "All the different dining establishments have different kinds of chicken and Home Plate's is the best -- that's why it's the most expensive."
Jennings' advice for deciding where to eat on campus: You eat where the good chicken is.
However, such inconsistency in DDS offerings and food quality is not taken so lightly by all students.
"I am infuriated by the wild inconsistencies in food quality at all of the dining locations," a FoCo back-alcove eater vented, "the sandwiches at Collis are different than the ones at Home Plate and the Hop. At the Hop, you can get salami on your sandwich! There is no salami in Collis."
Despite some perceived DDS inconsistencies, the Pavilion, Collis and Home Plate have some exotic offerings, including fresh sushi and the ever-popular Collis Late Night offering, Vietnamese pho soup.
"It's this amazing soup. They only have it at Late Night, and you can have beef or tofu. Or veggies," Gungadurdoss said.
Some, however, said food variety plays little role in determining where they eat.
"I eat places where I'm generally not going to run into people I don't like. And I eat at off times to avoid running into people I don't want to see. And FoCo -- I never go to FoCo," a studio art major confided to me at The Hop.
"It's not about the food -- it's about who you want to see and who you want to be seen by. Because remember, Dartmouth is a social network," she said.
That being said, why can't the FoCo back-alcove eater just walk to The Hop for salami? When Wall, a former resident of East Wheelock, moved to a dorm on Massachusetts Row, she expected the change in proximity to dining locations to "usher in an unprecedented era of weight gain," but was shocked to discover the opposite.
"Naturally, I assumed I would make runs to FoCo at midnight and buy hundreds of Mozz sticks," she said. "When I lived in East Wheelock, the relative proximity of The Hop would drive me to eat there very frequently, and everyone knows how hard it is to find something not drenched in grease there."
Wall, however, denied brand loyalty to be a factor in her food decisions.
"I choose where to eat based on the delicate ratio between proximity and menu," she said.
Despite The Hop's reputation for unhealthy food, it has a dedicated clientele that loves all manner of meat and cheese combinations when swaddled in flour tortilla wraps. It is arguably one of the two most athlete-populated eating locations on campus.
Cafe North, the red-headed stepchild of DDS, was never mentioned in my research save for a jaded comment by Joey Garagliano '11, who called the establishment, "It's the grimmest shit of all time."
While Dartmouth students all have their preferences, the unifying complaint for all pertained to pricing. Every person I interviewed had a comment about it, particularly where the Pavilion is concerned, debunking the myth that people don't care about pricing because "DBA isn't real money."
"I don't understand how Byrne Hall at the business school can be cheaper than FoCo and Home Plate, when it's exactly the same food, exactly the same buffalo burger," an exasperated Eng Han Ng '11 said.
"The Topside thing frustrates me a lot from an economic perspective as well, because they're always out of milk, and that's really upsetting because, I mean, they could just make more money and keep prices lower if they kept Topside stocked," he said. "You don't see Walmart saying, 'Oh sorry we don't have any oranges today come back next week.' They'd lose money."
Gungadurdoss said he first realized how expensive DDS was when he was forced to get chicken from FoCo for an event at senior society Casque and Gauntlet after procrastinating the event's food purchase for too long.
"We started at 6 p.m., and had to have food ready by 7 p.m., so I got like 10 grilled chickens from the grill in FoCo. Cost me 52 dollars. And they weren't even whole chickens," he said.
With such vehement, widespread feelings about dining at Dartmouth, it's a wonder riots haven't broken out.
Fortunately for DDS, students seem too preoccupied with who's checking them out to get too upset about their frustrations at the register. After all, why else would people tolerate $4.65 Odwallas?
