Dining Hall Alchemy by Andi Q. '25

One of the many things I love about MIT’s dining halls is that they are buffet-style, allowing you to get as much food as you want from several “stations” around the dining hall. Indeed, an easy way to level up your MIT dining experience is by experimenting with exotic food combinations across different stations. Although they are designed to be self-contained and you can get full meals from any single station, there’s nothing stopping you from getting food from several of them at once.

When I’m not in a rush, I find it helpful to do a quick scan of the entire dining hall first and think about what might go well together instead of immediately committing to the grill or comfort⁠01 The station with 'regular' hot food like pasta, roasted vegetables, etc. station. In doing so, I’m often surprised by how much the salad bar has to offer. For example, the stir-fry station at Simmons only has a selection of 8-10 different vegetables (which is admittedly already a lot), but you can double that number using the salad bar.

Some easy combinations that my friends and I have enjoyed over the years are as follows:

• Chicken tenders [grill] + Romaine lettuce [salad bar] + Ranch dressing [salad bar] = Crispy chicken Caesar salad
• Chicken tenders [grill] + Hot buffalo sauce [salad bar] + Honey [salad bar] = Hot buffalo honey chicken tenders
• Chicken tenders [grill] + Waffle [dessert] = Chicken and waffles
• Bagel + Guacamole [salad bar; only on Tuesdays at Simmons] = Avocado toast
• Cheese pizza [pizza; only at Maseeh] + Chicken tikka masala [comfort; only at Maseeh] = Curry pizza

Mixing foods from the same station can result in surprising new combinations too. Here’s a simple cereal combo recipe I learned from my friend Amee S. ’25:

Strawberry French Toast Cereal

Ingredients

Yields: 1 bowl of above-average cereal

• 1/5 bowl Cinnamon Toast Crunch
• 4/5 bowl Strawberry Special K

Preparation

1. Add half of the Strawberry Special K to an empty cereal bowl to form the first layer.
2. Layer on the Cinnamon Toast Crunch on top.
3. Layer on the rest of the Strawberry Special K.
4. Pour your choice of liquid into the bowl and serve immediately with a side of fresh strawberries (assuming you’re early enough to breakfast that they haven’t run out yet).

Ridiculously elaborate sandwiches

One of the best things about New Vassar dining is that you can get custom-made and toasted sandwiches for lunch there. Although none of the other dining halls have a dedicated sandwich station, they usually have most of the ingredients you’d need for a sandwich scattered around the dining hall.

Taking the above mixing idea a step further, you can create some ridiculously elaborate sandwiches, such as the one in the recipe below (also suggested by Amee S. ’25):

Dunkin’ At Home

Ingredients

Yields: One sandwich that I have been told resembles something you can buy at the Dunkin’ in the student center

• 1 plain bagel, sliced in half
• 1 omelet, freshly made by Kem (the dining hall worker who works at Simmons in the mornings)
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 1 tablespoon cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon feta, crumbled
• 2 black olives, sliced
• Sriracha

Preparation

1. Toast the bagel while Kem makes the omelet.
2. Spread cream cheese on one bagel half, and butter on the other.
3. On the bagel half with cream cheese, sprinkle feta and olive slices.
4. Top with the omelet and the other bagel half.
5. Serve with a drizzle of Sriracha to taste.

But if that’s too much work for you, here are some easier sandwich recipes my friends and I have used:

• Bagel + Tuna salad [salad bar] = Tuna mayo sandwich
• Croissant [dessert] + Boiled egg [salad bar] + Mayo [salad bar] + Mustard [salad bar] + Feta [salad bar] = Egg salad sandwich
• Cheese quesadilla [grill] + Veggie burger patty [grill] = Double-Stuf quesadilla
• Bagel + American cheese [grill] + Mustard [salad bar] = Sad college-student cheese sandwich

To toast my sandwiches, I often use the toaster ovens found in the lounges around Simmons. Note that this requires me to leave the dining hall, so I usually only do this if I get a to-go box (e.g., during late-night dining where that’s the only option).

Drink mixes

Of course, I can’t include “alchemy” in the title of this post without mentioning drink mixes! The mix-every-drink-in-the-dining-hall drink is a classic, but here are a few more… sophisticated options I enjoy:

• 70% passion fruit-orange-guava juice + 20% orange juice + 10% apple juice + Splash of cranberry juice for color = Fruit cocktail
• 50% plain soda water + 50% your choice of fruit juice = Fruit soda
• Root beer + 1 scoop vanilla ice cream = Root beer float
• Chinese breakfast tea + Milk = Boba tea minus the tapioca pearls⁠02 This may seem obvious in hindsight, but I was genuinely mindblown when I first made this combination
• Coffee + Chocolate milk = Mocha
• Water + Splash of red Gatorade = Pink water⁠03 Until my junior year, the Gatorade and water in the Simmons drink machine would cross-contaminate, resulting in perpetually pink water. They've fixed it now, but I still sometimes manually make pink water out of nostalgia or something.
• 50% orange juice + 50% coffee = Orange Joe⁠04 This tastes a lot better than it sounds. Trust me.

Where is this going

While writing this post, Amee S. ’25 suggested yet another… recipe(?) to include. It’s so ridiculous yet simultaneously brilliant, so I couldn’t possibly leave it out.

Squirrel Friendship Potion

Ingredients

Yields: 1 to 3 new squirrel friends

• 1 apple

Preparation

1. Take the apple from your choice of dining hall.
2. Ride the Red Line to Boston Commons.
3. Find a squirrel that doesn’t look like it bites.
4. Cut the apple into small cubes, and serve from a distance to your new squirrel friend.

Dining hall atrocities

The dining halls like to experiment with… interesting food combinations too! Here are a few
particularly egregious examples I’ve experienced:

• One time, New Vassar had “pizza bagels” during dinner. I excitedly bit into a pepperoni pizza bagel… only to find out they had used stale cinnamon-raisin bagels.
• Another time, Simmons had “maple-glazed tofu” during dinner. Imagine my disappointment when I entered the dining hall only to see raw tofu blocks floating in a large bowl of plain maple syrup.
• Finally, there’s whatever these were meant to be:

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(To be clear, these images were just display glitches on the menu, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if these did actually end up in the dining hall.)