Food for thought
Sophisticated dining habits spur local universities to offer cooked-to-order meals to lure prospective students.
 Xiaoting Yu (left) and Elena Lau prepared vegetarian meals at Boston University on a Mongolian grill at Warren Towers dining hall recently. (John Bohn/ Globe Staff) |
Mark Marchant loves the cooked-to-order Asian stir-fry, burritos, and most of all, the mushroom and cheddar omelet s that beckon him to breakfast after just five hours of sleep. Every day, he eats at least twice in the establishment that caters to all his culinary desires -- the dining hall in his Boston University dormitory.
"I love my mom, I love her cooking, but it just wasn't, 'oh, I can't wait,' the way I feel here," said the 19-year-old freshman from Florida, of the dining hall in Warren Towers on Commonwealth Avenue.
Boston University and other local universities are at the forefront of a revolution in campus food across the country. Their dining hall chefs are making food to order, a logistical accomplishment when catering to the individual tastes of thousands of customers a day. Forget mystery meat and soggy pasta. The students pick from a variety of gourmet, ethnic, and locally grown menus.
Colleges have been sprucing up their dining hall offerings to compete for prospective students, whose tastes have become increasingly sophisticated. Used to eating in restaurants, students demand lots of fresh, piping hot options, and they're finding them not just at BU, but also at Northeastern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
At UMass, students can get all-you-can-eat, made-to-order sushi and customized pho, Vietnamese noodle soup. Northeastern is considering a tandoori oven and a tossed-to-order salad bar for a future dining hall.
BU renovated two dining halls in the last few years, creating open kitchens and made-to-order stations. It is thinking about closing its three remaining traditional dining halls and replacing them mainly with one facility in the new style.
At BU's Warren Towers, funky red lamps and colorful wall tiles make for an upscale look. Food is elegantly arranged on stainless steel platters.
On a recent night, students could see everything: one cook using a pizza peel to fetch an individual serving of baked ziti out of the roaring pizza oven; another cooking sausages, onion, and peppers on the grill; and others chopping heads of lettuce and sautéing a spicy vegan recipe called firecracker tofu.
Glass doors on refrigerators revealed the raw ingredients -- bins of green peppers and cabbages, balls of pizza dough, slices of deli cheeses.
At the Mongolian grill, students filled bowls with their choice of sliced raw vegetables: deep red tomatoes, bok choy, green peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, onions, celery, cabbage, mushrooms, and scallions. Then cooks grilled the mixes on one side of a round grill, while chicken cooked on the other side.
Students chose whether to turn their meal into a stir-fry or soup, picking from pad Thai noodles or rice, vegetable broth or chicken broth, grilled chicken or fried tofu, teriyaki or sweet and sour sauce.
"I usually put soy sauce in it, and it's awesome," said sophomore Melissa Ahlborn as she awaited the completion of her signature dish, a soup with tofu, vegetables, and noodles. "I found something I really like, so that's what I get."
Options on other nights include gourmet grilled cheese with different cheeses and toppings, or mashed potatoes whipped in KitchenAid mixers with choice of Yukon, sweet or exotic purple potatoes.
When students get what they want, they waste less food, and that helps keep prices in check, college officials say. BU's 14-meal per week plan rose 2.5 percent to $3,720 this year and 3.7 percent last year.
The problem with this paradise is long lines. Several students said they often choose ready-made hot meals rather than wait 10 minutes in the cooked-to-order lines. Marchant said he sometimes eats Cocoa Puffs as an appetizer while waiting for lines to die down.
BU has beefed up training for food service workers, largely because they now spend far more time interacting with students. More than 400 employees attended customer service training this summer.
Marchant gushes about Mee Chow , a chef whose desserts he likes the best, and Enoc Parra , who serves omelet s with a big smile.
They add to the homey, personal atmosphere that drove up the Warren Towers's dining hall traffic 15 percent after renovations.
"You get back from a day of classes," said Marchant's friend, freshman Alison Morris, 19, from Minnesota, "and it's like, 'Yay, the dining hall! I'm excited.' "
Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe .com. 
