At the beginning of the year, Montgoris Dining Hall seemed like a decent alternative to a home-cooked meal. It was nothing amazing, but the overall quality seemed to be well above most school cafeterias.
However, in the time since school started, the general quality that characterized Montgoris has dropped dramatically. The real problem doesn’t seem to be the taste of the food itself, but with other adjustments (or lack thereof) made in the dining hall. It seems as if the small, seemingly unimportant details that have been ignored have become the main problem.
The available dishes in Montgoris once varied widely, but now students are lucky to see just a few new dishes a week. The meals that are generally successful are overused and become less desirable over time, such as pizza and pasta.
It’s not that the quality of the dishes has suffered, but the lack of variety and constant rehashing of menus continue to diminish the amount of students who want to eat at Montgoris.
After subsisting for so long on pizza, pasta, salad, sandwiches, and choices from the grill, it would be nice to have a few curveballs in the lineup. Instead of hamburgers everyday, why not throw in a steak burger, chicken sandwich, or other grilled specialties every few days?
Why not experiment with adding new items to the salad bar, or foregoing pasta for a less prominent dish that people tend to miss? Just a simple change every so often would completely refresh the menu.
Another growing problem seems to be the case of sustainability and environmental friendliness versus the wants of the students who eat at Montgoris. Beginning with Trayless Tuesdays, the dining hall became instrumental in helping St. John’s to become a “greener” campus.
No one seemed to mind, as this was a reasonable sacrifice. Soon though, Trayless Tuesdays started happening on Thursdays, then the whole week, and sometimes even silverware, such as forks could not be found anywhere in the dining hall.
Listed out, these do not seem to be much more than a few simple complaints. As anyone who eats there knows, these small complaints have snowballed to considerably lower the overall enjoyment of eating at Montgoris.
What was once considered by students to be an example of the meal plan working well has instead come to resemble the feeling of being cheated.
Montgoris is certainly not the worst cafeteria in the world. It has a friendly staff, nice eating area, and a suitable atmosphere for a college campus. Despite this, it is nowhere near living up to the potential that many know it has, and that is just a shame. There is no reason Montgoris cannot rejuvenate and have students wanting to eat there again. It’s just going to take a little bit of work.
