The chill wind and arctic temperatures of the last week have forced me to cower inside, venturing from my cocoon of warmth only to search out subsistence. Terrace, being the closest club to campus and thus demanding the least exposure to the merciless elements, became my focus this week. Spurred on by hunger, I courageously buttoned my coat, knotted my scarf, put on my flip flops and mentally prepared myself for the harrowing voyage ahead.
Trailing my friends, I ascended the sloping circular driveway that leads to Terrace, the only eating club not on Prospect Avenue. Inside, we took our places in line, and I surveyed the handwritten menu tacked over the steaming platters. The dishes were quite varied, and I gluttonously requested the chicken, the fish and the vegetarian entree, as well as a number of side dishes. We took our brimming plates to the main dining room, and having seated ourselves at a small corner table, we began our meal.
The chicken component of the poetically named "chicken with gazpacho salsa" acquitted itself admirably, encapsulated by a golden breading that retained every drop of moisture. Its companion salsa, unfortunately, resounded too heavily with the vegetal, pungent flavors of cilantro, which overpowered the onions and tomatoes that constituted the rest of the chunky broth. Flanking the chicken were several red-jacketed potatoes, which I found to be pleasantly sweet and mealy under the taut snap of their ruddy skin.
The asparagus was texturally perfect, yet possessed a distressing bitterness and several grains of sand. The asparagus seemed an odd choice as an accompaniment to the pseudo-Latin-American flavors of the chicken, but complemented the Salmon al Smeraldo quite well. The salmon itself, doused in lemon juice and parsley, had a mouth-coating fattiness which was tempered nicely by the acerbic bite of the lemon. Unfortunately, the fish was kept from true excellence by being slightly overdone, rendering it chewy rather than flaky.
The meal then took an abrupt geographical swerve from Italy to the Middle East as I tasted the vegan couscous with black-eyed peas. The insipid, overcooked parts of the couscous vied for dominance with its equally bland, underdone portions. This victor-less combination was made even less appealing by the pasty and flavorless peas dotted throughout. Slightly appalled and filled with pity for the vegans in the club, I turned hopefully to the dessert, which was laid out enticingly at the front of the dining room. My anticipation was rewarded with an anonymous cake-like confection liberally dusted with powdered sugar. As I savored its spongy, resilient bounce, the delicate interplay between the cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar gave a certain subtlety and refinement to this seemingly pedestrian pastry. My first meal at Terrace had certainly ended on a high note, but I had found the meal as a whole inconsistent. I presumed on my friend's hospitality and asked him to take me again the next day.
Stoically, we trudged through the icy gale to sup once more at Terrace's table. Going the opposite way, a jolly Terrace member enthusiastically extolled the excellence of that night's repast, apparently composed of mouthwatering hamburgers and all the requisite fixings. We hastened inside, only to find a greenish film of grease and beef scraps where once a heap of tantalizing burgers had lain. I cursed all the other freeloaders like myself who so depleted Terrace's food supplies, but quickly resigned myself to having a healthier, if less succulent, turkey burger. It was predictably dense, as poultry imposters tend to be, but still retained that taste of lingering lipids that characterizes a good hamburger. With the addition of some processed American cheese, I succeeded in ratcheting down the healthiness and significantly upping the delectability. At last it was time again for dessert, which was no ordinary lemon square, but a crumbly-topped, molten-centered, citrus-y extravaganza. Just like the last dessert I had so greatly enjoyed here, it was dappled everywhere with the snowy-powdered confectioner's sugar that abounds in Terrace.
Though I appreciated the range of the dishes available at Terrace, I found that their quality seesawed wildly between delicious and practically inedible, with a definite tilt towards the mediocre. There are certainly culinary highlights here, like the consistently well-executed desserts, the sheer variety of the offerings and the inexhaustible supply of bagels that sustain me whenever I walk home from a night out at Terrace, but these are outweighed by the preponderance of questionable dishes. Despite Terrace's proximity, I will have to brave the blustery gusts on Prospect Avenue, forced to dine at more remote clubs for the sake of my stomach.
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