The dining halls at the University of Maryland are known for a few key staple foods: buffalo chicken wraps, chicken tenders, late night food and ice cream from the Dairy. Yet this semester, they seem to have disappeared.
While these dishes will no longer be available daily, they aren’t gone for good, said Bart Hipple, Dining Services spokesman.
Chicken tenders and late night food such as wings, mozzarella sticks and nachos “will be coming up as something we call a ‘pop-up special,'” Hipple said. “So if you’re paying attention, we’ll have them once in a while. We are not going back to having them all the time.”
A reason for the cutback is because two of Dining Services’ main focuses have been to limit the length of the lines in the diner and to provide a wider variety of food — especially healthy food.
“The biggest complaint we’ve had about late night food for years, and years, and years is that there’s nothing healthy there,” he said.
Hipple also addressed student concerns about the missing buffalo chicken wraps, which he said made up 40 percent of the sandwiches ordered in the dining halls last year. The dining halls’ rotating ingredient menu is meant to add variety and give people more options, he said, adding that occasionally, all the ingredients will be available to make a version of the classic buffalo chicken wrap.
“Serving 150 things all the time is not variety. Serving 50 things, then 50 different things, then 50 different things — that’s variety,” he said. “We’ve shortened our all-the-time menus, and we’ve increased the amount of rotation we’ve done so that you, hopefully, cannot come in and get the same meal seven days in a week.”
And while the Dairy ice cream is also no longer a constant, Hipple said as part of the anytime dining plan, students have the choice between two soft-serve ice creams and two flavors of gelato. The dessert options will be expanded to include ice cream from the Dairy.
“We are planning Sunday sundaes,” he said. “That would be a special that we would run Sundays, probably at dinner time, once we get the operation running smoothly.”
In terms of the timeline for these specials, Hipple said it may be a little too soon to say. Until it’s figured out, chicken tenders, late night food and ice cream from the Dairy won’t be options in the dining halls.
“This is such a completely different system for us, and we need to be able to run the operation smoothly before we start bringing in the pop-up specials and Sunday sundaes,” he said. “As soon as we can, we want to.”
For some students who were content with getting the same meal every day, these changes aren’t entirely welcome. Samantha Finkelstein, a sophomore physiology and neurobiology major, said her main concern is the changes to the deli station.
“Maybe in some categories it may be enough … we don’t need ice cream sundaes every day or mozzarella sticks,” she said. “But I feel like things like the sandwich line, like the wraps — that was something that was so popular, and now our options have gone down.”
While freshman Maya Adams is new to the campus, she said she thinks the lines and the lack of carryout options are the problems — not so much the food itself.
“I do think it’s a big variety of food and I do think that there are healthy options,” the family science major said, citing the vegetable options and salad bar. “I think lines are reduced at certain times of the day, but when the breakfast and dinner rush hit, the lines are still pretty bad.”
Dining Services eliminated dining points, Terp Bucks and carryout at the end of the spring semester and introduced the anytime dining plan this semester. Despite the program being new, Hipple said he has complete confidence in it.
“I think this is a great program,” Hipple said. “I think this is a good thing and it’s the right way to go.”
