Dining at North Central College is, to put it simply, not the greatest. There are 4 main places spread throughout campus to get food. Let’s go through each one of them shall we?

Kaufman Dining Hall

Kaufman, often refered to as “Kman,” is North Central’s main dining hall. In this dining hall, one can use their meal plan for an all you can eat experience. The food at the dining hall typically has mediocrely prepared food. Cooked meat is overcooked, sometimes there is crunchy pasta, vegetables are soggy and for the most part, everything tastes processed and bland. 

I have personally seen gross, raw, food come out of large, plastic mystery bags. Your safest bet of getting decent, nutritionally average meal is the salad bar. 

The vegetables offered at the salad bar are unusually pigmented and a tad bit wilted, but how hard is it to fuck up vegetables? The salad bar has spinach, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and many other options to make a salad. I know eating only salads would be boring, so I guess sometimes you’ll just have to settle for the other below average food they offer.

The Cage

The Cage is the next most popular dining option on campus. It is known as “The Cage” because when it is closed, it supposedly looks like a bird cage (go cards). But no one really knows because who is there when it’s closed?

The Cage you can get super greasy pizza, knock off Mexican food or most likely Tyson chicken strips. The food in this “dining hall” is all fast food items. One word that can describe any food you choose to eat from here would be, greasy.

The presentation is also pretty unsatisfying as well but I guess that fits the whole “style” of The Cage anyway.

Au Bon Pain

Au Bon Pain, or ABP for short is supposed to have the small-town coffee and sandwich shop feel. But that place is so cramped it feels more like a squished-up gas station. At ABP you can get bagels, sandwiches, coffee and salads. The food at ABP is not that bad actually.

Since ABP is popular, because it might be the best place to get food on campus, one might find themselves waiting up to 15 minutes for a bagel with cream cheese only to find out that they lost your order and you’ve been waiting for nothing this entire time. It is quite the experience having to go through this multiple times in a week but that’s North Central for ya!

Freshens

Lastly, we reach Freshens. Freshens is located inside the ResRec building and is kind of a hidden place. Probably the least popular food option on campus, Freshens offers smoothies, rice bowls and macaroni and cheese.

The smoothies are not something to write home about. They normally have the consistency of frothy juice and I don’t know how they manage to pack the taste of freezer burn in their smoothies, but I guess anything is possible. 

Freshen’s is also known as the place most people get food poisoning! Yep you read that right. Occasionally, you come across a poor soul that orders a rice bowl that has some type of meat in it. Hours later they are throwing up in the bathroom, stomach in pain telling their coach they can’t make it to practice or their teacher they can’t make it to class.

I’ve heard this happen a few times from people I know and have experienced it once. And where does it all come from? A rice bowl from Freshens.

All in all, North Central College keeps their student’s fed and health- um, well, fed. No one is dying of starvation here but you just might if you have any dietary restrictions, but we can save that for a different post.