Tonight after a long day on campus I decided to go with some rez folks to the caf at Res Commons.  Turns out they have some pretty good food for a residence on campus at a university.  The students keep telling me they are sick of it, but hey, after 8 months of similar offerings, I’m sure I would too.  But man, it was actually pretty good.

The caf for these students at Carleton is all-you-can-eat for a certain time frame.  They have a certain number of meal tickets that they can use towards different meals during the day, and they can’t take food out of the caf (except for a piece of fruit).  They also have four guest passes that they can use liberally to invite friends, family, or themselves if they happen to run out of meal tickets.  I believe it is all on a swipe card as well.

Initially I was going to swallow the cost of the meal ($11 for the all-you-can-eat meal) but as I went to the caf with one of the students, another student arrived and she found out she had an extra guest pass.  SWEEET!!  I smiled quite big.

One lame concept is that you are not allowed to bring backpacks in the caf.  I had to leave mine out at the entrance, where there were cubbies for coats and bags.  I didn’t like this policy; next time I will leave my backpack in someone’s rez room for fear that my stuff will be stolen.  All of it.

There is one popular offering at the caf that is pretty darn unique.  It was a Mongolian grill-style stir-fry area.  You filled your plate with veggies and then you handed the plate to the cook, who put your choice of noodles and meats on a circular central cooking surface (stone deal) and bathed it in your choice of sauce.  The cooks didn’t use massive wooden chopsticks but used large metal spatula things instead.  They didn’t offer nearly as much variety for veggies, meats, sauces, or spices, but it was a surprise indeed.

I like the idea of a buffet-style caf when I’m at a campus, but I really wonder how I would fare as a student in such an environment.  I’ve expressed my distaste with buffets in the past.  This is probably because I would likely indulge in its temptations too often.  In my first year in residence, I likely gained weight, and it wasn’t even buffet-style.  How would you live in a residence knowing that every meal you wanted to get your “money’s worth” if what you really intended on doing was eating healthily and in sane quantities?  (the close proximity of the words “in” and “sane” was not intentional)