The Star dining hall for as long as I’ve been here has been controversial among Moravian students for as long as I’ve been here. That’s not without reason either because I and many other students don’t think the food is very good. 

However, there seemed to be some notable improvements to The Star last semester. There are more menu options at the grill, new plant-based options, and generally speaking, the food quality seemed like it would be better than last year.

However, for all those steps forward, The Star has taken enormous steps back recently. The menu has been absolutely terrible this year, specifically the dinner menu.

Every day I walk in hoping there is something good, but instead, it’s just rosemary chicken breasts every….single…..day. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, sure, but the dinner options have been overwhelmingly bad the entire year. It feels like it’s always some variation of grilled chicken and occasionally turkey or salmon over and over and over. 

You may say, “what about the grill or pizza?” but there are two problems with that. First, not everyone wants burgers and pizza every day. Second, the burgers and pizza aren’t particularly good. I’ll give credit where credit is due, they are better than they were last year, but I still wouldn’t consider them good. The burgers are still bland, and the pizza just tastes like a below-average frozen pizza.

What’s most baffling about this, though is that the lunch menu is heaps and bounds better than the dinner menu. While I wouldn’t consider the food restaurant quality, the lunch food is actually edible. Not only is it devoid of the painfully standardized format of grilled chicken and vegetables.

They have actual food like tacos, chicken tenders, and mac and cheese, but even that is a double-edged sword because for every day there’s mac and cheese and chicken tenders, there’s one where we get more grilled chicken. I do not know what the obsession with grilled chicken is but I beg please stop it. It’s always not cooked well, and it tastes horrible.

I assume it’s in an attempt to have healthy options, but there are a wide variety of healthy meals that taste good besides grilled chicken and salad. Even some of the stuff that sounds good on paper is just a trojan horse for the grilled chicken plague.

 For example, sometimes they will have chicken parm for dinner and if you’re someone who loves Italian food like me, that would make you excited. The only problem is that the chicken for the chicken parm is just grilled chicken. I don’t care what mental gymnastics you use, that is not chicken parm. This image to the left is chicken parm, not whatever grilled abomination we’ve been getting. 

I don’t know what changed to make the dinner menu the grilled chicken apocalypse, but I will beg on my hands and knees for this overcooked chicken to stop.

I will give credit where credit is due however, the pasta bar on Tuesdays is actually pretty good (despite the pasta itself always being overcooked), and some lunch items like chicken tenders and mac and cheese are also good, not by cafeteria standards but just by normal food standards. Lastly, the workers at the star are awesome. They are always extremely nice and helpful to students, so thank you for making our dining experience a little bit better.