Carleton’s Language and Dining Center (LDC) made national headlines this week.
On Wednesday, Jan. 27, LDC went all out for Retro Day, in which kitchen staff embraced delectable Depression-era cuisine such as tuna casserole, green bean casserole, and various other casseroles that definitely should have stayed in the Depression. In addition to the casseroles, LDC featured a mouth-watering Spaghetti-O Jello mold, a delicious-looking reflective wreath encircling bare hotdogs. Wednesday’s menu was even better than the hall’s typical yummy turkey with pineapple sauce, paneer pizza or Froot Loops icebox cake.
The dining hall’s dishes wound up in the Northwestern University chapter of anonymous social media app Fizz, accompanied by the post’s author reporting that they “never thought they’d be grateful” for Northwestern dining hall food.
Aside from LDC’s peculiar culinary choices, there have been rumors circulating widely of Oles committing unspeakable acts on the tables at LDC, and the hall’s notorious taco bar decimating bathrooms across campus.
Most recently, the dining hall experienced not one, but two burst pipes. On the day when your mom sent you a screenshot of her weather app, reminding you that it was, in fact, -36 degrees Fahrenheit in Northfield, LDC diners stared, aghast, mouths agape, as the sky opened, soaking them in a wash of pipe water. The flood penetrated the carpet, splashed tables, and took on an ocean-like saltiness after mixing with the Cucina’s notorious roasted broccoli. Onlookers described the occurrence as “biblical,” and while the flood left a tsunami-like wave in its wake, diners, surprisingly, were able to find a silver lining.
One student was glad for the LDtsunami, which offered a much-needed respite from “that new language the CUT guys have been working on” (thuh nuh luh thuh cuh guh huh buh wuh uh, in CUTese). Another student found that while the immense flood soaked her plate, it was the first time her LDC chicken breast had ever been moist. Other students were appreciative of the burst pipe’s positive effect on the wok station’s rice, which “definitely should not be crunchy.”
Although students’ soaked clothing and hair reportedly froze when they fled the dining hall (except for CHOP, and also the people who met the Dalai Lama on OCS… seriously, why is everyone bald?), the flood seemed to generally have tangible positive effects on the dining hall’s cuisine.
Unfortunately, the flood also resulted in a stampede to Burton after 3a. The BonApp Burton team made sure to mitigate this issue by only opening the dining hall between the hours of 1 and 3:30am and offering a curated menu of raspberry jam-covered fried tofu and sugary bread and butter pickles made in-house, which was, somehow, still better than LDC.
