Fish and Risotto at Pfoho Pfaculty Dinner

Harvard University Dining Services cooks so much food every single day, every single meal, not just for undergraduates, but for everyone else at the University. In addition, HUDS also caters for special events, including the Faculty Dinner.

I enjoyed a nice three-course meal with Professor Chaplin, my guest at the event. We started the meal with salad.

The salad was made with mesclun greens, cucumbers, craisins, toasted almonds, and goat cheese with lemon vinaigrette dressing.

I am not a big fan of cheese, but there are three types that I occasionally eat (and enjoy!): cottage cheese (I actually LOVE cottage cheese, as in, I eat it every single meal), fresh mozarella, and goat cheese (it's sweet!)

The entree was Pan Roasted Local Pollack garnished with Roasted Squash and Leeks. Under the fish was Risotto and Chive Buerre Blanc.

HUDS really made an effort with beautifying the dish. Haha.

I liked the seasoning on top of the pollack, though I really wished they were not that skimpy on the squash.

The risotto was super rich and not cooked enough because the rice was slightly hard to chew.

Overall, it was a satisfying dish albeit the risotto was too cheesy without much texture within the dish itself. The fish could have been more moist.

Cheesecake Served with Berry Compote. The "Berry Compote" is the fruit sauce that makes its appearance on Sunday i=with waffles. Haha the limitation of HUDS ;)

The cheesecake tasted like a piece cut out from one of those Sara Lee's frozen cheesecake.

I would have much preferred fresh fruits as opposed to berry compote drenched in sugar, but this is the economic way to be, I suppose.

Korean BBQ and Squash: The Best Meal Since I Came Back to Harvard

There is one dish at Harvard that everyone (except vegetarians) raves about: Korean BBQ. People love it so much that when the dining hall stopped serving Korean BBQ (because it's a seasonal menu), a lot of students got angry and protested to bring it back!

There was a sign listing all the ingredients in the special Make Your Own Korean BBQ section.

The bar included seared marinated beef (which ran out, as seen in the picture, attesting to its popularity!), crispy tofu, sticky rice, green leaf lettuce, kimchee, pickled cucumber, scallions, and ssamjang, or the paste/sauce that you add to the green leaf lettuce and the beef.

A close-up of the kimchee, pickled cucumber, and ssamjang. According to a friend, she saw the dining hall workers opening up a jar of kimchee, suspecting that they bought it from somewhere rather than make it in its kitchen. It must be quite expensive to afford all that kimchee! I don't really understand why the pickled cucumber is there...we, Koreans, don't eat that kind of stuff.

The dining hall lady brought the grilled beef from the kitchen! The sticky rice was literally a sticky glue that you had to scoop it so hard with the spoon to get it. I didn't eat any of the rice.

Someone once told me that Harvard has partnered up with a nearby squash farm, thus the prevalence of squash in the dining hall. I could eat squash all day, so I go absolutely crazy whenever they serve squash in the dining hall.

My two plates full of food! Wow, no wonder I was so full after devouring all this food. I couldn't choose between the regular meal and the special Make Your Own meal. I meant to bring a little bit of both, but ended up getting a lot of both haha :)

The best way to eat Korean BBQ is to wrap the beef and the kimchee into the green leaf lettuce and put it in your mouth all at once.

I was so pleased by the taste of the kimchee! I am sorry Mom, but it tastes almost as good as yours! I especially like the thick, whiter part of the cabbage then the leafy outer layer. Sadly, the green leaf lettuce wasn't that fresh, especially towards the edges.

The Korean BBQ itself didn't meet my expectation. The last time I had it at a different dining hall, the meat was clearly grilled over fire because it had nice grill marks and smell of the fire within the meat. This one, however, tasted almost boiled in water. The meat was really coarse, dry, and tough, though I did like the fact that it wasn't fatty. The meat was cut really big as well so I had to rip it apart.

My second plate was probably tastier because of the squash! I liked the slightly burnt edges. The squash was seasoned in some kind of sticky sweet sauce, which I think is unnecessary because it shields the naturally sweet taste of the squash. I like the more orange, mushier squash because it's easier to chew. The other dish I got was the portabella mushroom stuffed with quinoa, edamame, and cranberries (you can't see the mushroom), which tasted so bland and tasteless. The East Indian Rice & Lentil had pretty nice spices from the curry, but it was sort of greasy.

Exclusively Vegetarian Dinner in Pforzheimer

Luckily the dining hall changes its menu every meal so I don't get sick of it until the end of the semester when they begin to repeat menu.

I usually get food only from one line of the buffet: the vegetarian side. It's not that I am a vegetarian, though I could be if I wanted to. I typically don't eat HUDS meat because it's either the chicken breast that they serve in different variations, or the meat is cooked in a way that makes it super fatty and greasy. Today's vegetarian entree featured three different kinds of rice/grains and brussel sprouts.

The rice had lots of crackled pieces that it tasted like I was eating rice from the bottom of the hot-stone pot. The brocoli was way overcooked that it had no texture while chewing. The brussel sprouts tasted bland that I put in so much salt and pepper. Actually, that's the problem with lots of HUDS food...it's always so bland that I end up adding extra salt all the time. High sodium diet? Oh well.

Indian Curries and Quinoa at Pforzheimer

I had a nice sit-down dinner with my roommate Ash for the first time since we got back. Sadly the dinner wasn't nothing special, but hey, it's HUDS. The line of food I got was, from left to right, Indian curry with peas and potatoes, white and wheat bread rolls, and quinoa with garbanzo beans and raisins, which is the same stuff I got earlier for lunch.

The beef fettucini looked very greasy. Also, the beef served in the dining hall is usually very tough.

Chicken picatta or something? I don't exactly know what it was, but it was smothered with some weird creamy sauce. HUDS loves to serve different variations of chicken breast, ranging from red-spiced chicken (Tobasco sauce) to teriyaki chicken.

My plate of quinoa, sauteed collard greens, green beans, scallions, Indian curry, and hoisin sauce. The raisins in the quinoa added sweetness to the bland grain. The Indian curry lacked lots of spices. The hoisin sauce was too sweet and salty by itself, but of course you don't just scoop it and eat it by itself...it tasted good mixed in the quinoa. And the vegetables...can't really go wrong with them unless they are not fresh.

Ash's plate had a giant bowl of strawberry yogurt that she gulped down in 5 seconds! Haha. I am so proud of her for not drinking diet coke anymore. The fettucini that she had looked very dry.

Exploring Harvard Dining Halls: Pforzheimer House

Harvard has a total of twelve upperclassman dining halls and Annenberg, a freshman-only dining hall. Each dining hall has different configuration, and although the type of food is similar across board, their taste varies depending on the chef's cooking skills. I would say Pforzheimer House falls in the middle rank.

This section is for main entrees (usually two meat dishes and a vegetarian dish), some kind of carbohydrates (grains, rice, bread, potato), and two types of vegetables.

The salad bar is equipped with fresh mixed greens, lettuce, or romaine, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, brocoli, beans, beets, yogurt, cottage cheese, apple sauce, and pre-made salad.

Fruit baskets full of granny smith apples, red apples, oranges, and bananas. There is a frozen yogurt machine and many different types of cereal.

This section at the back of the dining hall features the special Make-Your-Own bar of the day. Depending on the day of the week, it features a fajita bar, Korean BBQ bar, baked potato and chili bar, greek salad bar, and Peking chicken bar (as seen in this picture, complete with chicken, tofu, mushu wrap, and sauce).

Pforzheimer House is famous for its two-level "double dining hall." The food is on the first floor, but you can bring the tray up to the second floor for more privacy and quiet dining.