Here's Some Food For Thought

Like many college students, I like to eat. I enjoy barbecued chicken, turkey sandwiches, stuffed peppers, waffles, salmon, veal, tuna salad, steak, fried vegetables, and just about any other cuisine that is considered somewhat palatable. Thankfully, I have been blessed with one of those teenage stomachs, allowing me to consume large quantities of food without ever having to worry about an unwanted increase in weight.

For many, my appetite and metabolism would serve as a glorified blessing. This is certainly the way I used to feel about my particular eating habits until the memorable day I unsuspectingly arrived at Yeshiva University and tasted the cafeteria food for the first time. I have since learned to fear mealtime, to view it as a necessary tribulation that I must exhaustively endure three times per day. Since all dorming students are required to purchase their meals in advance, and since eating out remains an extremely expensive expedition, we are each forced to withstand the torment that dining in our cafeteria has become. I personally don't eat there to enjoy a meal, but simply to survive - to nourish my tired cells with some form of basic matter that is at least recognized as storable energy on a microbiologic level.

In my three years residence at this prestigious institution, I have yet to witness any substantial change with regard to the quality, pricing or variety of the food, and I find that entirely unacceptable. Breakfast is the only decent meal offered in the caf, perhaps because it primarily consists of packaged and pre-cooked items. Lunch seems to always include greasy noodles and that same savorless freeze-dried fish we have all come to dread. (I occasionally frequent the caf at lunchtime for the entertainment value - I think the chef's attempt to dress that fish is hilarious: sometimes it's baked with spaghetti sauce and becomes "Poisson de tomato," on other days they adventurously throw in some lemon, coining it "citrus fish." But, as my grandmother says, "You can paint a Chevy pink, you can wax it, you can give it a spit-shine, when you're finished it's still gonna be a Chevy.") Dinner is consistently composed of seasoned Shabbos leftovers and the feathery chicken that has over the years become a YU trademark.

It is interesting to note that there was a period in which Yeshiva featured some of the finest kosher cooking in the city. From the late sixties to the early eighties, a man named Mr. Parker ran the kitchen, and Jews from all over Manhattan flocked to Yeshiva for a fine meal. However, Mr. Parker left the University to start his own catering service, and it is now almost impossible for me to conceive of a time when people willingly eat in our cafeteria.

More frustrating, though, is the fact that most of our food currently borderlines the regulations set forth by the American Heart Association. There is so much oil in our meals, we could sell the leftovers to Texico. Doesn't the University realize that serving cholesterol-saturated food is unhealthy? And instead of improving the quality or pricing, the administration has elected to increase the amount of dollars on the caf card to $750 a semester, so now we are lucky enough to obtain more of the same nasty, overpriced food.

I don't feel comfortable complaining; I like to investigate a problem and attempt to insinuate positive change in hopes of an ultimate rectification. To that degree, I attempted to personally meet with Jake Leiberman, Associate Director of Food Services, three times in June, but he was "too busy." The Commentator Features Department placed numerous calls to Food Services throughout the summer, but they were not able to interview a Department administrator. Faxes have been recently sent, each garnering no response.

In my first column of the year, I expressed The Commentator's sincere desire to work with the administration, a willingness that is certainly extended to the Department of Food Services. To be completely fair, I'm not aware of the future plans of the Department, as I have not yet been able to successfully establish contact with anyone in it. I know not of their goals, their excuses or of the obstacles that impede their arrival at some sort of resolution. I only judge from that which I can see - the same inferior food, lack of variety and unreasonable prices.

And so Mr. Chef: I beg you to please try out some new recipes, experiment, read a housewife magazine, or maybe take a few culinary courses because the degree that you so obviously attained at the Bangladesh Institute of Orphanage Cooking just won't cut it here in the States. Perhaps with some new ideas you will generate a menu based on variety, substance and health-awareness.

Mr. Leiberman and Department, I extend to you one request: Please yield to the outcries of the students and of their official publication; recognize us as paying customers who deserve high quality services at a reasonable price; meet with us and maybe together we will discover a conclusive solution for a significant issue that has plagued Yeshiva students for generations.