I am a foodie, and as a foodie, I am appalled at the food selection at the university.
Granted, Dixie State University is a newly born university — a bit cross-eyed and with simple aspirations — but DSU has potential to be a handsome and brilliant university when it grows up.
And just like a baby, this young university has an undeveloped palate. Well, more like a non-existing palate. Food is meant to be enjoyed, and perhaps even worshiped, like in some cultures. Hello, Ambrosia is not a four letter word.
You may ask me: “What do you know about food? You are no sexy Gordon Ramsay.”
Um, yeah. I agree I am not as sexy as he is, but when it comes to food, I would challenge him any day on the expertise of my tongue.
I have lived all over the Western United States, and I’ve lived in Canada and Germany. Trust me. I know food.
When I went to the Red Rock Cafe, I was a shadow of the starved Calista Flockhart in desperation for sustenance. To my dismay, none of the restaurants (ha, it is a joke that we call them restaurants) except for the lone hamburger place, were open.
Food may have not been a focus perhaps because most students live off campus.
According to every student I have spoken to thus far, it is the norm for the restaurants to be closed most of the day. It’s odd that a food services company for the students is hardly ever open when I am there. No wonder students are aptly named “starving.”
On a side note, any starving football or rugby player with a six pack can come over to my house for dinner any time. Or any man who looks like Eion Bailey, for that matter.
Now, I am not saying every meal at Dixie has to be sanctioned by Anne Burrell or Nigella Lawson. What I am saying is I could make any of the dishes at the Red Rock Cafe 10 times better for the same cheap price.
I like cheese fries now and then, provided by the burger place in the cafe. I don’t even mind the sandwiches or the Italian selection (Does the cafe use frozen pizza?).
Call me a food snob, I am OK with that. Once you have tried Ramsay’s shepherd’s pie or pad thai from Seattle, you too would have higher expectations.
There is not any good ethnic variety. Pseudo-American Asian isn’t real Asian, and what about Greek food? (Don’t get me started on the lack of Greek clubs here; that’s for another article).
Can the school add any popular food chains on campus for the love of lamp please?
We are now a university. University of Utah has real, honest-to-god restaurants and a flipping farmers market.
Let me also say, when you want to use certain meal plans at, say, the new Stacks snack stand in the Jeffrey R. Holland building, you can’t. What, what, what a ripoff.
My last rant about the school’s lack of true edible culture is the new coffee shack in the Jeffrey R. Holland Centennial Commons. Every time I go to get a quad latte, the innocent student looks at me and says, “Huh?”
It is a fact southern Utah is no Seattle and a minority drinks coffee. Although this is an admirable fact of this town’s culture, one would not become a mechanic not knowing what an engine is. Correct?
The food service needs to train its employees a bit more on the world of coffee, regardless if they do or do not drink coffee. That is all I ask.
I feel for these wonderful hard worker bees, who are well dressed I might add. These young students are thrust into a world of coffee without a coffee bean Oompa-Loompa to sing disturbing songs to teach them how to make a divine cup of excellence. How barbaric.
Wake up Dixie and have a cup or two of the most wonderful drink on earth. Get started with a brand new day of better food, more ethnic food, and perhaps if we are not afraid of being compared to University of Washington or U of U, maybe, just maybe, somewhere over DSU’s wacky rainbow, we will start a student-run farmers market. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.
