There’s room for creative juices on dining hall menu

Anyone who eats often enough at any one of USC’s residential dining halls knows that the food runs on a cyclic schedule. Fridays are usually the best nights at Parkside with salmon being a regular, and breakfast rotates the occasional pancakes or breakfast burritos, in addition to the main affair of eggs, bacon and waffles. The food isn’t bad by any means, at least by my standards, but the lack of variety can be tiresome. 

The idealist in me hopes for a constant change-up in dishes served at our residential dining halls. If you think about it, chefs have some of the most creative jobs — recipes don’t just appear out of nowhere. They are invented by chefs who have been struck by inspiration, their hearts guiding them to create very dish they’ve envisioned. USC could draw on chefs’ past experiences and give them greater individual freedom. What do they love to cook? Each chef could take creative control of the bar or even the entire dining hall for one day of the week and serve what he or she is passionate about. If a chef told me that he or she was inspired to cook something that their families love to eat, I’d be all the more willing to come down and support them.

From the kitchen’s standpoint, having a rotating schedule makes sense. Feeding hundreds of hungry college kids each day is no small feat. Think of the volumes of food (and the cost) involved! As difficult as it is, it’d be nice if just once in a while, students had a little more to look forward to in their residential dining halls. Whether or not the dining halls ever expand their food horizons, I give our chefs exceptional credit for being the hard workers that they are. It’s a tough job.