United Ministry at USC

First Year Focus - Food at USC

Disclaimer: All of the information I present here was originally published July 14, 2007 and edited March 17, 2008. Some information (especially information concerning off campus restaurants) is off the top of my head so the listing of off campus restaurants is by no means complete.

To all future freshmen and transfer students: I'm sure you'll want to know a bit about the food available at USC. So, I'll go ahead and discuss some of the restaurants, supermarkets, and discounts available to you. (yes, you get quite a lot of benefits just for flashing your USC ID or discount card)

In my opinion, most of the food available on campus is quite a lot better than what I expected of college food. Of course, your experience at USC may be completely different. During my freshman year, I lived at an apartment and had the 50 meal per semester plan so I did not get tired of residential dining at EVK / Parkside. However, friends who lived in dorms (who are all required to have one of the larger meal plans) do seem to be somewhat tired of residential dining. During 2006-2007, meal plans were changed to give more people the choice to eat at EVK or Parkside, so future Trojans will have even more options for dining.

If you ever need to know the operating hours of a certain restaurant on campus or you want to see the weekly menu for EVK / Parkside, I’d recommend bookmarking this page: http://hospitality.usc.edu/

Residential dining: EVK vs Parkside

In case you haven’t been on campus yet, EVK (Everybody’s Kitchen) and Parkside are the two buffets where you can use your meals. It seems that the majority of students believe Parkside is the better of the two. I agree with them too, so this section of the article will show some of my biases. However, I’ll try to list the pros and cons of each as accurately as possible.

EVK

Pros

- Quantity of food: EVK definitely seems to have a higher quantity of food available than Parkside. During all the times I have gone, I have not seen them ever run out of food.
- Location: EVK is close to Birnkrant, Marks Tower, New/North, Pardee Tower, Trojan Hall, Radisson Hotel, etc. It is also conveniently located right by Leavey Library.
- Certain items like the USC waffles and taco bar are exclusive to EVK.

Cons

- Seating: At peak hours (around 12-1pm for lunch and 6-7:30 pm for dinner) EVK is very crowded. Especially due to the proximity to so many freshman residence halls, EVK is packed and it may be difficult to find seating for you and your friends. If you want to go to EVK during a special event (to my knowledge, the special events are usually held during dinner time) you should definitely avoid peak hours and go early (5pm) or late (9pm). Every time I tried to meet friends at EVK during one of their special nights (ex. Mardi Gras Night) there were absolutely no seats. To boot, it was raining that night and some people were actually standing in the rain outside, holding their tray, and eating.
- Quality of food: Although the quantity is great, the quality of food is not as good as Parkside. EVK and Parkside do have separate menus but it seems that for items they have in common (such as salad bar, sandwich bar, pizza, etc) Parkside does a much better job.
- Atmosphere: For some reason, EVK felt like a sauna during parts of this year.

Parkside

Pros

- Quality of food: Do a comparison of the menus at http://hospitality.usc.edu/ and you’ll probably agree. Parkside puts quite a lot of effort into providing a variety of international cuisine.
- Seating / Atmosphere: There is usually a table available but due to the large number of students living at the new Parkside 2, Parkside is a lot more crowded than usual. Seating for a large group may be a problem during peak dinner hours. The only time it will be heavily overcrowded is during special event nights. Parkside seems to be slightly larger than EVK. In addition, EVK usually only opens their main dining area to students. There is a second indoor section that is only open during special events. Parkside also has better air conditioning and ventilation due in part to their higher ceilings.

Cons

- Location: Unless you are living at Parkside, EVK is probably much closer to you. (assuming you live in one of the many freshman residence halls)
- Quantity of food: Since Parkside has a stronger focus on quality, their quantity is often lacking. For popular items like the Oreo cake, “Kalbi” ribs (imitation of Korean BBQ), and grilled pastrami sandwiches, you will likely be only be able to get one dish unless you camp out in front of the chef for half an hour. Often, the portions for popular items like the items listed above are very small. (Why is my kalbi 1.5 ounces of meat and 3 ounces of bones?)
- From my personal experience working at a restaurant (in addition to unintentional eavesdropping), it appears that Parkside currently rotates all their employees through the many “stations”, meaning the same person who made pizza on Monday may attempt to make Pad Thai on Tuesday. Thus, each cook will be able to cook just about anything that is served at Parkside after maybe a few months of work. Of course, this means certain food items will be prepared by people who have been trained for all of 15 minutes to prepare a complex dish.

Retail Dining

Retail dining consists of all other USC restaurants where you are able to use dining dollars, discretionary, or cash (in most cases you can use dining dollars, however Ronald Tutor Hall Café currently has a stupid rule that does not allow dining dollars to be used before 2pm). Although there are many smaller, less frequented restaurants on campus, I will just go over the most popular ones.

Café 84

Located right by Webb Tower and the Lyon Center, Café 84 has a nice variety of restaurants. Like nearly all other retail dining, Café 84 has many “Grab and Go” items for busy students, including: breakfast pastries, drinks, sushi, sub sandwiches, desserts, etc.

The restaurants / other food available within Café 84 include:

- Jamba Juice
- Starbucks
- Tommy’s Pizza
- Wok Crazy
- Casa Italiana
- The Grill
- Salad / Sandwich Bar

Commons

Commons is located right by the USC Bookstore, Tommy Trojan, Bovard Auditorium, etc.

The restaurants inside Commons include:

- The Grill (which includes Rice Garden, La Salsa Mexican Cuisine, Trattoria Italiana, and Malibu Subs)
- Traditions (pub for 21 and over)
- Wasabi Sushi
- Wolfgang Puck’s Café
- Main Street (convenience items)
- Seattle’s Best Coffee
- Colombo Frozen Yogurt
- Carl’s Jr
- Upstairs Café

Off Campus Dining

Since the campus is located near downtown Los Angeles, it is not surprising that there are quite a lot of dining options off campus. The most important thing I’d like to highlight is the student discount card. I was lucky enough to be handed a card while walking to class, but if you were not as fortunate, you can simply order one (for free) at www.thestudentdiscountcard.com.

The card can be used continuously throughout the entire year at the following restaurants / retailers: Pasta Roma, Subway, Felix Chevrolet, Fat Street Grill, La Barca, Quizno’s, Viztango Café, Berry Best Yogurt, Del Taco, Bronz Body Tan, and Mikoshi Japanese Noodle House. (these are the participating restaurants for the 2007-2008 card and may change for the 2008-2009 year)

In addition, quite a lot of other restaurants in the USC area will offer discounts to students with their USC student ID. Subway (the one near USC’s main campus) offers a 10% discount with student ID. El Cholo’s (Mexican restaurant a bit farther off campus) offers 50% during Monday – Thursday (don’t quote me on the days). When in doubt, just ask an employee if the restaurant offers a student discount.

On the north side of campus (near Cardinal Gardens, Century, Troy East / Troy Hall, etc), there is Yoshinoya’s, Subway, Wendy’s, Burger King, Denny’s, Baskin Robbins, and quite a lot of restaurants in the University Village food court. The University Village food court offers a variety of different ethnic foods including Mexican, Italian, Korean, Chinese, and Mongolian.

On the west side of campus, (across the street from the KAP building, Vermont) there is a plaza with Taco Bell, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Togo’s (sandwiches), and Boba. Besides the restaurants and supermarket Smart & Final, there is also a Supercuts and a sporting goods store (note: I would carefully check any merchandise you’re planning on buying at the sporting goods store).

To the northeast (closest to Leavey Library, many of these restaurants are on the Jefferson & Figueroa intersection) there are a variety of small restaurants. Walking north for several minutes on Figueroa, you will run into Mikoshi Japanese Noodle House, Jack In The Box, Chano’s (open air restaurant with Mexican food, burgers, and sandwiches), McDonald’s, Panda Express, Del Taco, El Pollo Loco, Carl’s Jr., and a variety of other restaurants.

Finally, a little south of Exposition & Figueroa (by Tuscany) there is another small plaza with restaurants such as Quizno’s, Chipotle (free drinks with student ID), Coldstone Creamery, Coffee Bean, and Robeks.

by Sam Choi – Class of 2010