Lines stretched around the food gallery as students and professors flocked to Frist Campus Center during the first week of school. Before this captive audience, two chefs stirred noodles and vegetables over a large circular grill with wooden sticks the size of baseball bats.
No building will have as much of an impact on campus life this year as Frist. And as students struggle to understand the new dining options — and upperclassmen struggle to open their mailboxes — professors increasingly may be drawn from Nassau Street eateries to Frist's food gallery.
The campus center offers seven dining facilities, with foods ranging from hamburgers and French fries to Mongolian stir-fry to ruby ginger juice served in test tubes — a taste for every palate.
Exotic delights
The Mongolian Grill — the first eatery to the right of the entrance — offers a dining experience unmatched by any restaurant on or off campus. Diners choose meats, vegetables, sauces, spices, noodles and rice buffet-style for the chef to grill. Neither a spatula nor a wok for this chef, however. Wielding two sticks that could pass for a Titan's chopsticks, the chef gracefully tosses the ingredients on a round drum-like grill and serves the food in a painted china bowl. Because the cost is based on weight, meal prices vary greatly. The average lunch-size portion costs between $4 and $6 per bowl.
A backyard grill
Though America and Mongolia sit on opposite sides of the globe, they are neighbors in the food gallery. The Grill serves the same traditional barbecue cuisine found at the grills in the residential college dining halls, but super-sized. While the typical dining hall hamburger is just under four ounces, the TNT Burger — topped with cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato — is six ounces. The TNT burger is comparable to a burger at Applebee's or similar family-style restaurants with intense flavor and outstanding taste.
The Grill also serves flat grill sandwiches such as melts, the Chicken Tender Club and the Tavern Griller, which is made with ham, Jarlsberg cheese, tomato and roasted pineapple mustard on foccacia bread. The TNT burger is $3.09 while the cheese steak sandwiches cost $3.95. The Grill also has specials for the Late Show — the snappily named late meal option — such as grilled chicken and fries for $4.75 and a hamburger and fries or two hot dogs and fries for $3.75. All Late Show options include a 16-ounce fountain soda. Though refillable during late meals, the drinks are not refillable at other times.
A taste of home
Food For Thought models Boston Market in its home-style cooking, with rotisserie chicken cooked in an oven in full view, meat loaf, turkey, roast beef, ham and side dishes such as mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese. Unlike its commercial look-alike, however, Food For Thought also serves ribs, fried chicken and specialties from the residential college dining halls. The food is better here than in dining halls because it is not made in bulk, but still lags a few steps behind Boston Market.
Every week, Food For Thought will feature some menu items from the visiting chef program. Side dishes are $.25 per ounce. Late Show packages include a half-chicken with two sides or a large portion of ribs for $4.75 and a quarter-chicken with two sides or a small portion of ribs for $3.75. These prices are only slightly cheaper than Boston Market.
Sandwiches and sushi
The Gallery Deli offers Frist eatery diners the greatest number of options, serving up an enormous variety of sandwiches, wraps, salads and pre-packaged meals. All meats are Boar's Head, and Dining Services has labeled some specialties with witty names such as The Dillon Jam and Chancellor Greens. Traditional deli sandwiches are $3.75, an eight-inch hoagie is $4.75 and specialties are $5.25. These prices do not compare to the dirt-cheap subs at Hoagie Haven, where the sandwiches — while of lesser quality — are larger and just over half the price of Frist hoagies.
The deli also serves a Princeton late-night favorite — sushi. A seven-ounce portion of California rolls with ginger and wasabi is $4.75. Though pre-packaged, the California rolls compared in taste to Soonja's, but not to Ichiban.
Cheesy but pricey
Among the many options in the Frist eatery is a national pizza chain, Villa Pizza. DDS signed a licensee agreement with the chain, which serves pizza, calzones and other Italian specialties. Though a bit pricey at $2.09 per Neapolitan slice — a slice at Pizza Colore costs $1.50 — Villa Pizza's slices have thicker crust and more cheese than other pizza available in town. In addition, Villa Pizza cuts an 18-inch pie into sixths, forming larger pieces. The Sicilian and stuffed pizzas are hefty in both portion-size and price. But the bottom line is you can get three slices on Nassau Street for the price of two at Frist. The pizza isn't that much bigger and about equal in taste.
Late Show packages include a calzone and garlic stick, stuffed pizza and small salad or two Neapolitan slices for $4.75 and pasta or one Neapolitan slice and a small salad for $3.75.
A cozy corner
Upstairs from the food gallery is another eatery, which is half yuppie coffeehouse and half French café. The café offers various coffees and teas in addition to hot soup and pastries. But what really makes the café different are the panini — hot grilled sandwiches on thick country bread. A good place to go when the food gallery is packed, the café offers a quiet, cozy atmosphere where one can read while sipping coffee or munching a muffin.
Juicy concoctions
Though popular on the West Coast, juice bars are only beginning to drift their way east. Commonly mocked for its strange glassware — test tubes and beakers — the Beverage Laboratory offers a bar unique from any other. Juices range from the common (orange juice) to the bizarre (ruby ginger — a magenta concoction of beets, apple and ginger); from the tart (watermelon apple juice) to the earthy (veggie cocktail — a greenish-orangish-brown mixture of tomatoes, spinach, carrots, celery, parsley and beets). It's "earthy" because it tastes like soil-pasted vegetables from the garden, a rabbit's delight.
The Beverage Laboratory also offers Frutazza smoothies and will begin serving bottled beer and wine when it gets its liquor license in October. Generally, the juices are filling and though the choices may baffle you, they are all worth trying if you have the cash. Juices are $2.59 for 12 ounces and $3.29 for 16 ounces while a Frutazza costs $3.00.
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