E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Boston College's The Chocolate Bar serves just about every chocolate pastry imaginable, including chocolate cake, and even has a chocolate fountain.
Who doesn’t want to attend a school that’s best in the country at something? Devotees of the U.S. News & World Report report can brag about their classes at Harvard or Princeton. Anyone big into BCS college football rankings will want LSU and Alabama as their alma mater. Not me. I’d want to be at a school that’s got bragging rights in the food world. While I work towards my dream of ranking the country’s best food schools (anyone who wants to help, let me know), I’ll call out a few with highlights ranging from sausage making to chocolate fountains.
Master meat crafting: University of Wisconsin at Madison
Last year, UW launched a meat science program. When you’re done with the two-year program, you earn the title Master Meat Crafter. It’s a funny name (it suggests that you become the beef equivalent of an ice sculptor) but a cool program: Students learn all about sausage making and bacon curing, both in the classroom and with hands-on meat processing work. Among the benefits: after a two-day meat curing lesson, you sit down to eat what you learned.
Vegan heaven: UCLA
I didn’t arbitrarily assign this award. Last year, UCLA won PETA2's Most Vegan-Friendly College Contest. (PETA2 being the student branch of PETA.) At UCLA, food-service workers regularly met with the student-run Bruins for Animals. The school offers dozens of vegan options, including veggie chicken fingers and vegan chili cheese dogs; for dessert, there are vegan cappuccino cookies. If you hate that UCLA has this honor and another school doesn’t, the bracket for Most Vegan-Friendly College for 2011 is live right now; as of this writing, UConn and University of Colorado at Boulder both made it to the second round.
Sustainable superstars: Pomona College, Claremont Calif.
If you didn’t know I was talking about a school dining program, you might think I was describing a high-end NYC restaurant. Since the fall semester began, the school has sourced about 65 percent of its seafood from fisheries that don’t practice overfishing. All the coffee and tea is fair trade organic, all eggs are sourced from cage-free chickens and most of the meat served is humanely raised. I wonder if they have a good wine list to go with that.
Best tailgaters: University of Mississippi at Oxford
This school has a motto that I admire: "Ole Miss may not win the game, but we will always win the party." By all accounts, the Grove — the 10 acres of Ole Miss where fans set up magnificent tents, with well-set tables and multiple direct TV screens inside — is tailgating masterclass, as long as you’re not looking for a whole hog roasting on a spit next to a keg. There are no RV’s, no grills and technically, no beer; much of the food is catered, and most of the drinking is hard alcohol, which is absolutely fine with the local authorities.
Chocolate champions: Boston College
If I’d been aware of this program as a senior in high school, I know where I would have applied early decision. BC operates The Chocolate Bar, which serves just about every chocolate pastry imaginable: chocolate cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate sundaes and multiple kinds of chocolate cake. What takes them beyond is the make-your-own-fondue chocolate fountain, which I thought was basically illegal after your super sweet 16.
More from Food & Wine:
- America’s best road trips
- Best fried chicken in the U.S.
- Best pizza places in the U.S.
- Best burgers in the U.S.
- America’s best pie spots
- Disney World’s best-kept food secrets
Leave a Comment:
But the best ice cream, at lest 30 yrs ago was at UConn. They had an on campus dairy that made ice cream at least as good as B&J's or that Scandinavian place with the "aa" in the name. And it was free at meals in the dorm! Talk about the freshman 10 (or 15, or 20).
I went to UConn in the 70s, and had ice cream at lunch and dinner in the dining hall. The enlarged dairy bar is still on campus in the School of Ag. and is open to the public. My husband and I make the trip a couple times a year to try new flavors and to watch the manufacturing through a glass wall.
This just goes to show that college is no longer focused on education. Its a time for spoild brats to party and indulge themselves while spending mommie and daddy's money. There's nothing wrong with some good food but a "Chocolate Bar" pastry shop is just ridiculus.
Awww, poor thing! Sounds like a little animosity. We are the land of the free, why can't we enjoy the nice tiings in life if we so choose. Don't be so judgemental, some like to enjoy the fine things in life and it doesn't mean they aren't receiving a quality education. The party fiends in college are quite often those who do not have the ability to achieve their college goals so they drown their issues in alcohol. Less likely is the situation that they just have money to blow and choose to waste their parents money by partying and eating well.
KiloByte,
There's always someone who has to rain on everyone else's parade. As one who works for a University dining service in an otherwise small town, dairy bars and cafeterias like these not only employ hundreds of university students who would otherwise have no way of paying for college (like me) but they actually give students and faculty a place to hang out and socialize besides the tavern scene. When you have 9,000 adolescents living together on a campus that is barely 1 square mile in size, your dream of students spending their entire lives in classrooms and libraries, hard at work, is very unrealistic and a little ridiculous.
And no one gets to spend mommy and daddy's money unless mommy and daddy let them spend their money. In which case, why is it any of your business?
I have to agree with KiloByte. As a blowhole republican and a good god fearing christian, I believe students these days should be required to grow their own vegetables and fruits, slaughter animals, and cook by fire. That will learn them some character.
WHY is Virginia Tech not on this list? We consistently have the top food in the country year after year in addition to having good academics and a great football team!
VT's food rocks!! Good eats and an amazing selection. (Although I wasn't impressed w/ the desserts; keep in mind that I grew up eating real Italian & German desserts & lived in Paris, France for 8 mos while in college and ate French patisserie every day. I'm pretty hard to pls in this department)
No wonder college is so expensive. I lived with 4 other students in small, cramped campus housing. My meal plan in college consisted of beef labeled in boxes that said "Grade D but edible", peanut butter made from powder, powdered eggs, powdered milk, white bread with mold and non caring college students on the financial aid plan working their way through college serving the crap to us. And guess what? Tuition was so low that I came out of college with a BS degree (from a well recognized state institution) and money left over to buy a suit for my job interview. That was without any parental assistance. This generation is so lazy and needy that they have to have vegan food and cappucino cookies? What a disgusting joke. No wonder no one wants to hire these losers.
I walked a mile for a Camel.
You're reading too much into this article. Take a vacation. Or at least pick up a box of ice cream sandwiches from Safeway and watch Jeopardy.
Bitter...party of one.
Not bitter but I knew that post would draw the ire of the collegiate crowd. UC Davis has pepper spray on the menu these days, glad I missed that item.
There's always one old timer who thinks anyone who gets it any easier than he got it is a lazy welfare bum and that he's better than everyone else because his way was the right way of doing it. I say, why stop at your standard of roughing it? Why not live with 8 other students in campus housing eating brown rice and water without working toilets or electricity? There is nothing like an arrogant old brute to prove the old conundrum, "You kids have it so easy these days; we had to suffer through so much back then. Oh, but also, the old days were so much better and your generation is useless."
His point is valid, but these are still interesting articles. I don't think everyone eats like this. It's another "lifestyles of the rich and famous" sort of thing.
There is a small (NCAA Div. III, athletically) that probably has the best food for its students in the country. And that college is Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio.
Why would someone who claims to be a vegan or vegetarian want to eat food that looks like meat even if it's not made from animal flesh?
If you're gonna call yourself a vegan or a vegetarian, you have no business eating mock-meat or vegetable material compressed to look like meat products. You either embrace your lifestyle or stop calling yourself vegan/vegetarian. Otherwise, you're more than likely having an identity issue and probably should try another slice of bacon, just to be sure you know what you're missing.
That is totally what I was thinking when I read about the "mock chicken fingers"! What a joke these people are!!!
Great post!
I just wanted to know what a veggie "chicken" finger was. It's either a veggie or a chicken - not both. Either way, they still should get the finger! (any guesses as to which one?)
Some people like the taste of meat, but don't want to support the horrifying ways food animals are raised/slaughtered. No "meat substitute" is ever going to taste as good as the real thing, but sometimes they're decent. Try to relax a little, people should eat whatever they're comfortable with eating (and if it's not meat then they are in fact a vegetarian or vegan, so they absolutely should call themselves that).
Want the really best one? Then the Culinary Institute of America's, Hyde Park, NY meal plan has every one of these beat! Foie Gras, gourmet mushrooms, truffles, locally sourced organic ingredients including the finest quality meat, cheese and dairy.... Amazing degree programs, challenging courses and THE best culinary education in the world! Freshman 15? It's more like 50 here but worth every single pound! Around the world with the best food! This is where the good ones go to be excellent.....
I was just scrolling through, waiting to post this very thing! Very eloquently put, B Garcia. My son is a CIA grad and got (had - it's a very adventurous experience at times - haha) to eat every item he learned to prepare. I had always thought the Cordon Bleu was the world's premiere cooking school, but now know otherwise. They also have a Baking and Pastry Arts program. There are on-campus restaurants where the public can get a taste of what the students learn. (It's about an hour north of NYC.) Truly has to be the best college food in the world!
Note that one of the reasons today's colleges, including public ones, are too expensive for kids to work their way way through is that, to compete for students, many have done away with the old, standard grab-a-tray and choose-from-a-few-items cafeterias. For that reason, I'm discouraged by this display of foolishness. My Alma-mater's commuter cafeteria now has skylit ceilings, terraced levels, potted plants, and booths with knockoffs of Subway, McD's, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc. When I went there in 1970 with the grab-a-tray cafeteria, the tuition was $756, 600x the $1.25 minimum wage. Today the tuition is over $10,000, 1400x the $7.25 min. wage. We've created county-club colleges for rich kids or middle class kids who want to graduate with a lot of debt.
True, true. Our kids need to learn how to rough it. The term that comes to mind is "catering to". I'd say our kids have been a little too catered to.
As a VN vet living on the GI Bill at $195 a month, Ripple and PB&J was good enough for me.
I wonder what our President was eating in College when he was attending as Barry Sorento here on a Visa ?
Oh, please. Stop showing your ignorance with this birther nonsense.
McDonalds burgers, fries and pulled pork sandwiches sprinkled with coke dust.
The WORST university for food, as well as many other things, is BLACK HILLS STATE UNIVERSITY in Spearfish, SD.
Well, stop cooking it with dried buffalo dung!
Also,
UCLA just opened a new residential restaurant earlier this month called Feast.
It's one of the only university residential restaurants in the nation that specializes completely in Pan-Asian cuisine, and the food is super delicious. On some days, the presentation of the desserts is reminiscent of those of a "real" high-class restaurant. There is always a long line just to get in for lunch when Feast opens.
I don't know what kind of food ASU might have been famous for. I got by on boxed macaroni and cheese prepared without butter, ramen noodles, and a couple chicken drumsticks every Saturday night for a splurge.
Sometimes I would get extra hungry and raid a dorm cafeteria if they didn't catch me on the way in. That food wasn't good by anybody's standards, but after the things I had been surviving on, it was fit for a king.
I remember saving up small change for beer. You could get cheap swill for $2.50 a case back then.
Oh! The suffering. How ever did you survive?
I fondly remember back to my college years at Eastern Michigan University when I lived in the dorm and ate at the dining commons. During finals one semester, we had our Sunday "mystery meat" dinner. It was listed as "steak" on the menu on the wall, but you could hear a faint whinnying sound when you cut into it with a knife. That night I was so sick I didn't know which end to take care of because both of them were spewing forth in copious amounts. I had a final the next day and wondered if I'd be able to even walk to the classroom to take the exam. Somehow I managed to sit there for two hours, without dashing off to the restroom where I'm sure the professor would have had to accompany me just in case I had the answers somehow affixed to the inside of one of the toilets. And so, I know that EMU will never be on the list of Universities With Finest Eats. Instead, EMU is near the top of the list of Universities With Food Poisoning.
We feel the best college food served is at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. Bon Appetit food service is the provider of the food there. They purchase a large amount of food from local farms within 150 mile radius from the college. All the farms are local, sustainable and hormone free. They buy pork, beef, chicken, turkeys, milk, and vegetables for their dining hall. Therefore, it is very fresh, great tasting food with a great selection. The chef there is very talented in creating dishes with their farm to fork program. Their program there is unlike any other that we know of in the country. We know the above to be true because we are the farmers that provide pork to them.
It's too bad that the quality of education at these schools doesn't match the food.
I have had the pleasure of dining at both the Sheraton Hotel and Reastaurant Management School at the University of Hawaii and The Hilton Hotel and Restaurant Management School at the University of Houston. Both are white table cloth restaurants. The food quality, choices and service are on par with any 4 star restaurant I have been to.
@Kilobyte Was spelling the focus when you went? Who knows maybe the brats can learn to spell spoiled and make it all worth it.
I feel a little duped by this article. I thought they were going to outline what was really good cafeteria food. Not whats at a tailgating party. Unless they put the tailgate food on the meal plan, this really wasn't an informative article.
I went to (and visited) a few institutions of higher learning in my day (actually to this year, as I chaperoned a college visit to UF). Some of the food was actually great, and some places like where I spent my freshman year I only at from the pizza machine and the occasional salad and supplemented with ramen noodles and the twice a month wings from a local wing joint! See, that would've been an informative write up, NOT something about some chocolate bar that might or might not be on the meal plan (as this was not indicated).
Foods out! With this generation,it's a pill.
Weather is usually a prominent component of choosing where to go to college, but food? Maybe it could be.
Lighten up folks. Why all the hate. No need for a diatribe on the youth of today. I work with the youth of today and they're a fine bunch of upstanding citizens. If you got off the hate bandwagon and got to know many of them you'd find they're great kids with a true sense of giving back to their communities and to the world. No need for you to be name calling on them.
Of course there is a need to disicpline and shape the youth of today. Those of you who coddle them reinforce their laziness and ignorance. Just ask the youth of today questions about politcis and social issues. If it is not a video game or social media, it doesn't exist. When they get to college, they are taught by professors who will not allow free speech in the classroom, only their vision of how society works. But the nice thing about all this is that the 1960s mentality of free everything is once again being shown for what it truly is-the loser mentality.
I obviously work with a smarter class of college student than you do. But I think maybe you don't really know so much about kids that age. I suspect you posted just to get across your political viewpoint. Do us all a favor...turn off Fox Noise and pick up a good newspaper or a book other than sports or anything by Glenn Blech.
Everyone needs the pleasure of being invited to lunch or dinner at the U.S. Naval Academy. Being in Annapolis, you get not only some of the best seafood in the country , but it served to you at your table. Some of the best four years in my life.
Virginia Tech has amazing dining options and I have felt that the meal plan is very fairly priced. My dining options at Wake Forest in the early 80s were pathetic (though visiting that campus recently, they have great choices now). While it may appear that these kids are a bit "spoiled" compared to their parents' college dining experience, they are being exposed to more variety and healthier options. This exposure has a great impact on them once they are making grocery and cooking choices on their own.
What does it say about America (or this site) that one can't have a simple discussion on the merits of gobs of ice cream, mouthwatering chocolate and hearty meals without it turning into a food fight. Seriously - you know who you are - get some counseling.