This week I have decided to review a place on campus, Waring Square in the West dining hall. Last semester I looked into the brunch offered here, but this time I am going to review the dinner. There are multiple different stations, and you can pick food from any of them. There was a lot of new food in the buffet this time when I went, and it was exciting to try it all out! The first item I tried for dinner was the pasta salad that the dining hall was testing out at the time. This was placed in the center of the buffet, where the condiments are located.
I thought the pasta salad was okay, but I thought it lacked a bit of flavor. The ingredients include orzo, cherry tomatoes and mozzarella cheese balls. Although it tasted fine, I wish there was more seasoning or dressing in the salad to make it more flavorful.
I also tried the cheese pizza with some added toppings. This was from the Italian section, which also contains pasta with a couple different sauce options as well as breadsticks.
I added parmesan cheese, chili flakes and oregano to my pizza slice. The pizza tasted pretty good, and I really liked the taste of it with these additions. The slices are cut up pretty small, which ended up working out for me, as I wanted to try a variety of things. You can always get multiple slices, though, so this is not a problem. I also got a breadstick, which is not pictured. The breadstick was really soft and tasted great. This is probably my favorite part of the Italian section.
On the plate with the pizza, there is also a piece of sweet chili cauliflower. I had never seen this before, so I initially only got one piece to try. I actually really liked the taste of the cauliflower! It was on the sweeter side, and I could not really taste much of the chili, but I still thought it was really good. I got more after trying the one piece, and I would definitely recommend trying it out if it is available.
One of the stations was set up with a range of ingredients to create your own burrito bowl. This was something else I had never seen before, and I decided to try it out.
This bowl included rice, lettuce, pinto beans, salsa, cilantro, tomatoes, scallions, queso fresco and sour cream. I liked being able to personalize my bowl, and it tasted delicious too. The one part I would improve is the rice, as I thought that it could be better flavored with more cilantro and lime. Regardless, it was nice to see something different, and I would get it again.
As for dessert, I decided to try sticky bun with cream cheese icing. This was also a food item that I saw for the first time in the buffet. It tasted alright, but I definitely think it could have been made sweeter. I still wanted something sweet, so I decided to try out the famous West cookies. I will admit that I think these cookies are really good just like the rumors say. They are heated up well and made really soft.
Overall, I thought dinner at Waring Square was pretty good. There are small aspects that can be improved, but the food is tasty for the most part and nothing struck me as not good at all. If you have not yet tried it out, you should go to try out something new, and make sure to grab a cookie!