South Campus vegetarians will have to wait yet another semester for the arrival of the long anticipated Mongolian Grill, a veggie-friendly counter planned for the South Campus Dining Hall, dining officials say.
Originally floated by school officials as an option for better accommodating vegan students in 2006 and slated to open almost a year ago, the Mongolian Grill has been plagued by delays in winning health department approval.
Now, after announcing tentatively last month that the new counter would open this spring, Senior Associate Director of Dining Services Joe Mullineaux said delays in acquiring needed equipment will push the opening back to the fall.
The news comes as a blow for vegetarians and students looking for healthier options at the dining hall.
“I try to keep a balanced diet of greens and vegetables and fruit,” sophomore environmental science and policy major Joanna Calabrese said. But she doesn’t find them at the diner. “I buy it myself,” she said.
“It would also be nice if they accepted requests to have grilled cheese and quesadillas cooked on separate grills,” she added.
That’s one of the features officials say will be offered by the Mongolian Grill. The grills at the diner offer nominally vegetarian options but everything is cooked on the same surface. The Mongolian Grill will have a completely separate grill for meat.
But trying to accommodate those grills has turned into an ordeal. Dining officials say they will require unusually large exhaust hoods.
“We hoped to have it open at the start of [this] fall, but the exhaust hoods are fairly unique,” said Mullineaux, who explained that the grills are “two extremely high heat sources” that the Health Department took more time to review. “The Health Department inspects everything before anything opens up. This is something they had no familiarity with.”
The cost of the hoods has also caused delays because large ticket items – such as vehicles and dishwashers – have to go through an open bidding process run by the university’s Department of Procurement and Supply.
Mullineaux expects that they will award the contract to supply the hoods sometime this week or next.
The new option won’t make everyone happy though.
The grill is scheduled to be open only during lunch hours, which worries freshman business major Jay Turakhia.
“The pizza, the fries, the veggie burgers, it all gets old after awhile,” Turakhia said of the dinner menu. “There’s not too many vegetarian options.”
jammin@umd.edu
