By Peter Howlett | junior | Grosse Pointe South High School
[This work comes from the Art of Storytelling class, taught by Julia Satterthwaite.]
At MIPA journalism camp, students are given only one choice for meals that they don’t have to pay for out of pocket. Vista, the food court at Shaw Hall, features Bread Box, pizza and salad bar, Main Street, classic American foods and choice cuts of meat, and Garden Wok, vegetarian and Asian. For being the only choice for a student that might not have the means to order food delivery to the dorms, Vista does not do its job as a food court very well at all.
Bread Box, located to the left of the East hall entrance, provides diners with a salad bar, with many combinations available. The salad, in comparison with some other options at Vista, shines. One resident claims it was “the best thing I’ve had” at the court. The pizza, on the other hand, is lackluster at best. Art of Storytelling student Jude O’Meara describes the crust as “rock hard”, and rates it a 3/10 overall. Breakfast is not much better, with lukewarm scrambled eggs, mediocre potatoes, and coffee being placed across the court from where breakfast is provided. Considering all of this, Bread Box is the worst area of the court to get your food, and it’s not very close.
Moving down to Main Street, towards the West end of the court, cheeseburgers, chicken tenders or sandwiches, and cuts of meat including chicken or pork are available every day. I believe that this is the best place to get your lunch or dinner from, especially the consistently tasty burgers. The beef is surprisingly good, and with toppings it becomes a relatively decent meal. Accompanied by the tenders, the dinner I enjoyed from Main Street on July 22 was easily my favorite meal from Vista. However, the “finer” options such as the pork or rice are, to me, “mid”. The meat lacks flavor, and the amount of rice or veggies given relative to the meat are ridiculous. Despite this, Main Street gets my vote for the best food available.
Crossing the court, to the right of the East entrance, are 2 locations: Garden and Wok. Garden features vegetarian or vegan options, including desserts like vegan cake. The cake is surprisingly good, despite the dry texture. Wok has Asian options available, mostly chicken variants like General Tso’s or orange, along with rice and stir fried vegetables. This location is hit or miss, as the chicken I had for dinner was mediocre, gray in color, and lacked flavor. However, lunch the next day was quite delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Garden Wok comes in as a close second to Main Street for dining choices.
Finally, general selections including drinks and cookies are available near the end of each food line. Coca-Cola products, juices, and more are available from fountain machines, and are average, with good variety. The cookies are quite good, and I enjoy the soft chocolatey texture of the chocolate chip cookies. Out of all parts of the court, the drinks and cookies are the most reliable and consistent option, even though they don’t really count as food.
Overall, the Vista food court has some good choices, more than enough in terms of mediocrity, and definitely bad choices as well. The few consistently good choices get repetitive quickly, and are unhealthy to be chosen each and every time you eat lunch and dinner. I shudder at the idea of living in Shaw hall and spending most of my meals at these same three locations. Even though it could be a lot worse, I find Vista to be deep in the trenches in comparison to other food court experiences, leaving a lot of room for improvement.