What’s missing in Drexel’s food options | The Triangle

What’s missing in Drexel’s food options

Photograph courtesy of Ivoanzola at Pixabay
Photograph courtesy of Ivoanzola at Pixabay

One of the great parts about living in the city of Philadelphia is the wide variety of food options that are available to students.

Last week, I ventured out of Drexel University’s main campus and into the other parts of the city to do some exploring and found this great Thai restaurant, where I rediscovered my love for Thai food. Though Philly is a city with manifold food offerings, Drexel itself could benefit from a few key additions to diversify its food scene.

A major type of restaurant that is missing from Drexel’s list of options is vegan. It’s no secret that there have been requests for more vegan options to be implemented, and there have been a few times when friends of mine who are vegan have told me that finding places to get food can sometimes be a bit tedious.

From my conversations with them, I’ve come to learn that The Fresh Grocer is one of the most reliable options for vegan food. However, this is to be expected and not recommended because The Fresh Grocer is a grocery store, not a restaurant or fast food establishment. It is good that The Fresh Grocer takes Dragon Dollars, but that is only somewhat of an added bonus.

A lot of restaurants within a reasonable distance of the main campus offer only some vegan options on their menus and I think that a full-on vegan restaurant, like HipCityVeg for example, would be a great addition. And it would probably get a lot of regular customers from both vegans and non-vegans. Personally, I am by no means a vegetarian or a vegan, but I enjoy having a vegan meal on occasion.

Staying within the same lane as veganism, more healthy options in general would be nice to have. The Handschumacher Dining Center and the Urban Eatery have both made improvements in their healthy options to meet the requests of students who have been asking for some more healthy options. This change was a good move on Drexel’s part, as it showed that the university does recognize the request of students for healthier food options.

Something that could be a major success if it were added to Drexel’s dining options would be a Panera Bread. The nearest one is across the Schuylkill River, and being that it is a very popular choice among a lot of people, I’m sure that it would get a lot of good business if it were to be added to the main campus. Cafes are very popular on Drexel’s campus with examples like Starbucks and Saxbys. Places such as these offer good food and a good place to study, so Panera Bread would fit in almost perfectly in both aspects.

I feel as though there needs to be an ice cream parlor somewhere on campus as well, because I haven’t found any good places where I can get good ice cream with dining dollars, dragon dollars or meal swipes. The best ice cream I have found so far is from an ice cream truck that appears at random times during the night across the street from the Northside Dining Terrace, but that costs cash, so it doesn’t really count.

Along with that, I also think that there needs to be more options for good seafood, especially sushi. Aside from the sushi inside the Northside Dining Terrace which is just average, there aren’t any places to get quality sushi with the Drexel meal plan, so a sushi bar of some sort would be very nice to see.

Overall, in terms of options, Drexel is doing a good job of making sure that its students are offered a variety of choices. There are of course additions that can be made, but that’s usually the case regardless of where you are. So, it wouldn’t be entirely fair to say that Drexel is not diverse with its dining options.

Hopefully, in the future we will start to see new food options get implemented into the meal plan, but these kinds of things do take time, so as students, we’ll just have to have patience.