The hardest part about being a vegetarian at UCLA may well be trying to order a sandwich at Bruin Café. With no vegetarian option explicitly listed on the menu this year ““ there was a roasted vegetable sandwich last year ““ I’ve had to resort to ordering the roasted turkey sandwich without turkey. Believe me: It took more than one attempt before I discovered that these were the magic words needed to get a sandwich without confusing the cashier.
Bruin Café aside, vegetarians with on-campus meal plans won’t have too much trouble obtaining vegetarian fodder, if they know where to look and are willing to deal with high-calorie and sometimes repetitive fare. UCLA’s dining halls were by no means created equal, and depending on where you choose to eat, you can greatly alter your chances of finding an adequate veggie meal. As a second-year who has lived on the Hill for five quarters now, I’ve noticed a few important differences between each of the dining halls at lunch and dinner. Here’s my assessment.
The worst dining hall for vegetarians is probably De Neve’s residential restaurant, which shows a consistent lack of decent veggie alternatives at dinnertime. I often find myself gazing sadly into a bowl of dry Caesar salad while my companions chow down on beautifully fried chicken wings. The only dishes I look forward to eating at De Neve are the garden vegetable lasagna, the Mexican tostadas and pizza. On the plus side, De Neve does have a relatively complete salad bar, though the prepared salads usually have chicken or beef.
The Rieber dining hall is risky for vegetarian and non-vegetarian students alike. Although this restaurant tends to have a diverse assortment of foods (contrary to its All-American label), the main problem is that Rieber seems to be more interested in quantity than quality. To compensate for the subpar food, Rieber provides an exceptionally interesting salad bar, complete with water chestnuts, cashews and jicama.
Covel’s dining hall is a ho-hum option at lunchtime and a gamble at dinner. Lunch usually consists of various bland and limp prepared salads (most of which have meat or don’t taste very good) and a pasta or curry dish (which are somewhat redeeming, taste-wise). The salad bar has remained boring with few interesting vegetable and dressing options. The grilled bell peppers, mushrooms and tofu are unique to Covel, but like salads, become difficult to stomach on a daily basis. Dinner, however, can be quite impressive at Covel. Lately, tasty soy meat substitute has appeared frequently, thankfully replacing the bland potato bar that used to be a regular occurrence. Sometimes Covel will even have exciting dishes like Japanese omelets, creamy, ricotta cheese-filled pasta rolls, and nachos with churros.
Hedrick’s dining hall offers the best bet for a yummy vegetarian meal. It’s an uphill climb, but if you’re willing to walk the extra couple of minutes, you may find it’s worth the walk. Hedrick almost always has vegetarian sushi, an interesting salad bar (more than Covel can claim), at least two vegetarian pizza choices, a mock-Mongolian barbecue station where you can choose your vegetables and fake meat (hint: go near closing time to avoid long lines) and, more often than not, premade vegetarian noodles, pasta or a rice dish. Third-year anthropology student Dana Larkin, who has been vegetarian since elementary school, said she finds Hedrick especially convenient as well.
“That’s my favorite place to eat,” she said. “It’s a lot easier to customize the food you want at Hedrick than at any of the other dining halls. At Covel, it’s a lot more of a hassle.”
Once you tire of the all-you-can-eat dining halls, the takeout restaurants become a tempting alternative. But beware: The food served at these restaurants is shockingly high in calories. A roasted turkey sandwich at Bruin Café, for example, has a whopping 821 calories. (Hopefully, it’s a couple hundred calories fewer without meat.)
Even the vegetarian taco salad at Rendezvous, which sounds nutritious, has 574 calories, about the same as the vegan pizza offered at Puzzles. Rendezvous certainly has the most options with a full eight vegetarian meals to choose from (and nine on Fridays, when they serve spinach and mushroom quesadillas), including its new and exceptionally oily chile relleno.
Two overarching problems for vegetarian students who eat on the Hill are a troubling lack of diversity and the difficulty of finding tasty food that’s still healthy. Contrary to popular belief, vegetarians do not live on salads and garden burgers alone ““ the idea of eating raw vegetables every day is loathsome, and frozen garden burgers aren’t very appealing either. I manage to eat a salad maybe every other day at one meal, but that’s about it. One can only live on pizza and pasta for so long.
Also, it would be nice to see ethnic food beyond Italian, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese. What about Vietnamese, Korean, Thai or Indian food? There are vegetarian dishes from all of these, and as someone who has grown up on Indian food, I can attest to the existence of dozens of palate-pleasing vegetarian dishes from South Asia. It wouldn’t hurt if the dining halls tried to be a little more health-conscious as well; I’m frequently appalled by the huge spoonful of oil used to cook an omelet at breakfast, and all too often I find Covel’s pasta drenched in grease. And because vegetarian options are sometimes severely limited, I end up grabbing whatever I can find, even if it’s the most unhealthy thing there ““ fries and pizza, for example.
The bottom line for vegetarians: Eat at Hedrick for the most varied and healthy options until you get sick of it, and then go to Rendezvous. You gain the Freshman 15, but at least you’ll break the monotony. And hey, you never know: Maybe next year, there will actually be an easy-to-order vegetarian sandwich at Bruin Café with fewer than 800 calories.
If you have (vegetarian) food for thought, e-mail Nijhawan at anijhawan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.