"This wannabe Chinese food, some of these random exotic dishes, the theme meals--I don't think a service like Annenberg can provide that kind of food," says Jeff Y. Kurashige '00. "You're not going to be able to make something that's really gourmet for this number of people and expect it to come out well."

George C. Fatheree '97 of Cabot House says that HDS tends to be too fancy across the board, not just in entrees.

Fatheree takes mustard as a case in point. The Cabot dining hall, he says serves only the fancy brown, dijon-style mustard.

"I like the plain yellow stuff, you know--French's Mustard. They have it in the little packets, but it's just not the same," he says.

Not everyone agrees that simplicity should rule, however.

Megan E. Henry '00 says she thinks that "there's not enough adventure in the food--they should use more spices and garlic. But first, they have to improve the quality, because if they put spices and garlic on now, the food would just be heinous."

Many students agreed that menu planning needs more attention.

"We need more variety over time. They've had the same six salad dressings ever since I came here. They're good salad dressings, but it's easy to get bored with them," said Ben J. Lima '98.

Lowfat Options

General variety is important to students, but no single area gets as much attention as beefing up the selection of vegetarian or healthy choice options.

"I would try to have more low fat, high protein meals. You can only live on pasta for so long, and as a wrestler it's really hard to get protein in a low fat medium," says Scott F. Malcolm '97.

"There should be less fat in the entrees, and they should be more mainstream," says Kelly A. Kinneen '99.

Vegetarians are particularly unhappy about the fat content of the vegetarian entrees.

Eric Nguyen '99 of Mather House says that he would like to be a vegetarian, but the offerings for vegetarian entrees are just not acceptable.

"The problem is that the vegetarian entrees have three times as much fat and they're bad also. They have a bad fat-to-taste ratio," says Nguyen.