Food. I miss the healthy, affordable, sociable dining halls from university. There are people who cook better than I do, and who should be able to make great food at a reasonable price by buying fresh ingredients in bulk.
My options for eating are
* Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food.
* Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small portions.
* Fast food. Quick and cheap, but unhealthy.
* Supermarket ready meals. See above.
So yeah, I would love an urban cafeteria serving a handful of healthy, cheap, fresh meal options. I'm sure it can be done.
Edit, re Tel: [1] I love to cook, but not when I'm in a rush, and I'm not always near home.
It's not quite the replacement for a dining hall, but learning to cook is not only cheap but really enriching in other ways as well.
1. It's easier to be healthier (and in time this transforms
to "impossible to not be healthier".
2. It's an impressive skill for attracting relationships
both friendly and romantic.
3. Once you're confident, cooking for a party of friends and
second degree strangers is a GREAT way to meet new people.
I forget who it is, but there's a HNer around who's had great successes throwing open-to-all, multi-course Hacker Dinners and taught himself the skills more or less on the fly. At the end of the day, everybody eats; almost everybody can enjoy interesting, tasty food; and those who can skillfully, confidently serve that up become a social hub.
It is indeed a great skill, but time is limited and it feels so incredibly futile to spend 30 minutes preparing nice food for the millionth time, when in 10 minutes it will only be a memory in my stomach.
(edit: removed a superfluous link, so instead I'll just be anecdotal. Cooking and eating are great social activities when done right. In my mind it's incredibly relaxing to cut vegetables and manage a meal. Conversations can spring into new inspiration or just better bonding with friends. I understand that not all meals can put striving for that kind of bliss as a major goal, but I'm not trying to defend all meals.)
What university are you referring to? Personally, I find university dining options to be overpriced, with low food quality. Sure, they often try to be healthy, but I've never felt a draw to them. The only good aspect I can see to them is the social aspect, which (as another poster mentioned) is solvable by simply learning to cook and using it to create a social hub.
I was a grad student at an Ivy League school and I found the "all you can eat" food options to be impossible; everything was so stuffed with fat that I couldn't eat much of it...
I recall a cafe in Brussels I saw on some PBS travel show, where all the seating was long wooden benches. This is much more sociable than what I see in most US eateries.
I find that one of the Whole Foods in Houston is a good option, so long as I don't want to pig out. (The one off Wesleyan - 4004 Bellaire.) They have a couple of long tables, but not enough volume of people interested in talking. The food is top-notch, though and they have a great selection of raw foods. Kirby - the food isn't as good though okay and the customers are obnoxious. (Some of the help is pretty unconcerned too.) Westheimer & Wilcrest - I liked the store and what food there was was good, but selection was gimpy when I worked near there. The other Whole Foods in town are not worthy of the name as far as the hot-bar selections and attention to detail go.
Sometimes I've eaten at the Kirby Whole Foods and looked down the row of 2-seat tables by the window. 4 people in a row eating by themselves and reading.
(There's some weirdos at the cheese bar at the Wesleyan/Bellaire Whole foods who know a bit and give a damn about cheese -- enough to give out delightful recommendations.)
Have you ever been to IKEA? I wish that they would do stand-alone cafeterias like that have in the store, but place them around the city; I would eat there all the time.
It's really good (and healthy [steamed vegetables, fish, etc.]) and really cheap; it's awesome.
Ikea restaurants are loss-leaders to get people into the store. I too will quite happily pop into an ikea just for food too but the idea is that you have come to shop.
But as a loss-leader it doesn't make sense to have independent stores in town.
I have the opposite complaint. My school's dining hall meal plan works out to $8+/meal and it's infuriating. I now spend almost half as much by shopping at Trader Joe's and cooking.
What do you count as good food? I find that it doesn't take me that much longer to make something good and healthy (maybe not gourmet delicious) than it would to wait in line at a cafeteria.
Good food: Salad, main course and dessert for around £4. Lots of vegetables and other (healthy) perishable ingredients. The thing with perishable food at home is you either have to constantly buy in small quantities, which is time consuming, or buy more, plan your meals up-front, and hope you can use it up before it rots. This is also assuming it makes sense to travel home for dinner most evenings and cook, which is not true a lot of the time. Three good courses is what I'll do for a dinner party, not when I've come in late and tired.
Also, in a food hall you don't have to do the washing up.
Still, it sucks that your setup is so expensive and the queues are so long. The worst I've seen is a university where they've outsourced everything to a bunch of chains. The food is overpriced, processed and bland - it's just like eating in a mall.
I've always wanted somewhere that would serve a decent salad reliably for £5. I've yet to find that place. If they existed, they'd have me as a customer at least 3 times a week.
I agree with this... only I want to add one more star
* open late.
where do I get food at 2am? silicon valley is full of Engineers who don't have to stumble in to work until 11 or noon, yet most places that serve food close at 9pm. what is with that?
My options for eating are
* Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food.
* Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small portions.
* Fast food. Quick and cheap, but unhealthy.
* Supermarket ready meals. See above.
So yeah, I would love an urban cafeteria serving a handful of healthy, cheap, fresh meal options. I'm sure it can be done.
Edit, re Tel: [1] I love to cook, but not when I'm in a rush, and I'm not always near home.