The Ultimate Dining Marketplace is Finally Living Up to Its Name!

When I think about the Marketplace a few things come to mind: wilted lettuce, weird meat dishes involving olives and cold, stale pizza. When I was living on campus and forced to go to the cafeteria everyday I spent a lot of nights eating bland pasta, loading up on tons of frozen yogurt and complaining. Thankfully, I live off campus now and can enjoy culinary delights from my own kitchen AKA Whole Foods burritos and lots of Annie's Mac and Cheese. Regardless, I have found myself missing the caf in the past few weeks as my senior friends and I have been reminiscing about all the time we spent "people-watching" (read: gossiping) and just overrall being carefree freshmen and sophomores with nowhere better to be.

After taking a trip down memory lane, my friend Erin and I decided to take Lauren, our Australian friend, to experience the Ultimate Dining Marketplace. Imagine my surprise when I discovered not only a burger bar stocked with a wide variety of breads, rolls, wraps and cheeses (blue cheese is my favorite!) but also a take-out area (no more stealing greasy grilled cheeses for a late night study session only to find them hard as a rock hours later). The vegetarian station has a million more options and baked potatoes are always available with a ton of garnishing options. I'm not going to lie, I was not only impressed but jealous of all of the people that get to eat there every day.

Maybe I'm just impressed because I haven't been there in a year and everything seemed new and exciting. Maybe it's because the novelty of having my own kitchen has worn off and I can better appreciate the luxury of a wide variety of prepared food and someone to clean my dishes. Whatever the reason, I thoroughly enjoyed my pilgrimage to the Ultimate Dining Marketplace. The only downfall: We barely knew anyone to gossip about.