Students eat at Adele’s restaurant in Stamp Student Union.
In hopes of drawing in more business, Adele’s is giving students and faculty a few more reasons to make the Stamp Student Union restaurant their upscale destination — including crab pretzels and Kung Pao pasta.
The third-floor restaurant makes standard practice of cycling out tired menu options every 18 months, so this spring ushered in a new menu formed over a year of planning and patron input, said Bart Hipple, Dining Services assistant director.
When creating the new menu, Dining Services officials left a poster board of the first draft, along with a red marker, in the waiting area for patrons to critique the new ideas. That’s how the crab pretzel ended up making the cut, and it’s proved to be a new favorite, said Joe Mullineaux, Dining Services senior associate director. Input also came from students who worked at Adele’s, who developed a way for students to customize their own burgers, he said. Now, patrons can combine pulled pork with crab cake, if their stomachs desire.
Dishes originally offered as specials also helped officials add permanent items, such as Alaskan snow crab legs.
Previously, the chef based options on popular restaurant items, Mullineaux said. However, the spot has been faced with a changing campus environment over recent years, especially with the addition of 251 North and new restaurants along Route 1. To adapt, Adele’s eliminated high-priced steaks in favor of New York strip steak the semester before the university’s all-you-can-eat dining hall opened.
Though the restaurant has strayed from some pricier foods, students said they still consider it a good bet for a change of pace from the dining halls.
“I love going to Adele’s,” said Anna Johnson, a sophomore English major. “I always found something I liked. It was really nice that you could go and get a steak.”
Though it’s too early in the semester to say if the changes will increase patronage, there are already positive signs, Mullineaux said.
Sales tend to start slow at the beginning of the semester, but the restaurant saw 52 percent more patrons the first week of this semester than it did fall 2012, he said. Despite additional competition in the area, the restaurant has also seen a slight growth in business each semester.
Reed Kaczmarek, who visited Adele’s just before winter break, said he’d been happy with his meal — ribs and a sampling of the crab dip his girlfriend ordered.
“They both were good. A lot better than The Diner. I didn’t have any complaints before, but hopefully the change is for the better,” said the freshman electrical engineering major. “I really didn’t see any need for them to change it.”
While Adele’s patrons will have months to test out all the latest offerings, officials are still keeping one eye on how they can continue to keep things fresh.
“As a matter of fact, we’ve already started the next menu,” Mullineaux said with a laugh.