Going into residence, I had preconceptions about the whole “dining experience.” I imagined intimidating women in hairnets serving out helpings of beef slop, veggie slop and surprise slop, which would just be a beef and veggie slop blend. I hate giving in to clichés, but there was a part of my brain that truly believed that’s how it would be. It’s also the part that tries convincing me Pop-Tarts are somewhat healthy and that walking to the fourth floor burns off routinely eaten pie.
Walking into the hall was a grand experience. There was no slop! There was pita bread, stir-fry, chicken skewers and roast beef. Oh how I love roast beef. I went straight for it. It was love at first smell. The succulent gravy, the lightly pink middle, the potent tang of that outer layer. I relished as the server carved the mighty roast, struggling, still fighting with it to slice out a serving of my favourite meat. She dipped the geometrically pleasing ladle in the gravy tub and poured sweet victory over my roast. I topped it off with some cauliflower and a strip of garlic bread to produce a meal worthy of a king. King of England, King of Floors, King of Late Night, any King. The food is great. What it lacks in love it makes up in quantity. Enough of anything trumps love eventually, especially when anything involves gravy.
Everyone always goes to the grill, which I don’t understand. The grill has stadium food: hamburgers, hot dogs and calzones, which always reminds me of the calzone episode in Seinfeld. No calzone I have ever seems to match that. Television has ruined me.
I much prefer the other sections, with roast ham and pineapple sauce, with curried rice and beef stroganoff-like stews. I rarely know what I’m getting. I usually just point at trays and go, “Yeah, I’ll have some of that.”
When I can’t find anything in the plethora of trays, I usually turn to the soup section, a Starbucks “cream and sugar” booth-sized stand smack in the middle of everything. There’s usually a good soup, and the substantial amount of cracker packs means you always have fun eating it. Aren’t you disappointed with soup and no crackers? It seems like that’s one of those childhood imprints we carry into adulthood. Soup with crackers is a must, just like Oreos and milk. If there’s a cream of anything, I go for that. Cream of anything is better. Broccoli is awful, a vegetable I decry the food of anti-unicorns, destroyers of rainbows and everything beautiful. But when creamed, it’s reasonably tasty, telling me, “Hey, it’s cool man. I’m just on my way to your stomach, but I’ll totally taste delicious on the way down. No worries bro.” My favourite soup is cream of cauliflower and cheese, a match made in a bountiful food afterlife. The bowls are cool too. Holding them while waiting in the UBCcard swipe line makes me feel like a Jedi, focusing the force into an energy ball of heat and destruction. Okay, so that sounds more like a Sith than a Jedi, but the point stands.
While the soups are fantastic, they’re usually a backup, a reliable ace ready to jump into battle when the call arises. Soup is the retired cop, called into action when no one steps up, when the team can’t get it done. Soup has character, but lacks the flare to be number one, the flare to be a fighter. And that’s why I go with roast beef, because roast beef can put up the gloves and get it done, can leave a healthy smile on my face that only a good meal can. And so my food mantra is proclaimed:
All I want is roast beef, but a good soup will do.
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