Caltech Food Tour
Caltech may be a small campus, but it has a large variety of food options. There are three main dining locations on campus — The Lee F. Browne Dining Hall, the Hameetman Center (which houses our beloved Red Door Cafe), and the Broad Café.
All on-campus students also have access to open kitchens in their houses, where a dinner special is served everyday and different breakfast options are available. There were countless times this past week that I ate my meal and then remembered that I forgot to take a picture of my food – here’s a brief diary of just some of the meals I had.
Monday
I had dinner at Lloyd House, of which I’m a social member. The dinner special in the North Houses that week was brisket with cabbage and creamy potatoes. There were also additional vegetarian options that I indulged in, such as the stuffed pepper fried rice on the bottom right of my plate. For dessert, the kitchen staff gave me two chocolate chip cookies. It was a sweet way to end off my meal.
Tuesday
I decided to get dinner at the Browne Dining Hall (formerly Chandler) where the special station was serving eggplant parmesan. As shown by my dirty cutlery, I barely remembered to take a picture of this meal before digging in. It was the perfect comfort food to begin a night of writing up problem sets.
Wednesday
For lunch, I decided to trek out to Broad Cafe, which is located on the other side of campus. I tried out the new sandwich on the menu, an eggplant sandwich with mozzarella, tomatoes and spinach on whole wheat bread. I had it with a side of minestrone soup and some lemonade.
Thursday
I went back to Broad Cafe the next day to try a classic sandwich, the Bacon Chicken sandwich with sundried tomatoes. This time, I chose to satisfy my sweet tooth with a chocolate scone.
Friday
To celebrate the end of the week, I got some food from the Mongolian barbecue station at Browne Cafe. Here, you get to pick out vegetables you want (I got baby corn, mushrooms, spinach and broccoli), your proteins (tofu + shrimp), and then the different sauces for the stir fry (I chose garlic oil, hoisin sauce and oyster sauce). It was a big lunch but I enjoyed every bite.
This was some of the food I ate at Caltech over the course of the week. I’m always excited to see what’s being offered every day. Being just a five minute walk away from good food on campus, I hope to be able to do more of these mini-tours in the future.
