leonard cafeteria

If you enjoy food, or need it, like most people who breathe, then you will likely find yourself in need of a place to seek sustenance in between frittering your time away in residence watching whatever Family Guy episode you downloaded off of DC++.

In this case, you can go to Ban Righ for your standard university cafeteria experience, or to Leonard Cafeteria, where you can partake in a relatively new style of dining. Leonard Caf was recently renovated (two years ago) to accomodate a larger number of students, and, from what I have heard, to make it a little more appetizing (not so nice before). In this process, Sodexho, the company that oversees campus food services, equipped the cafeteria to offer a marché style dining experience- food is prepared in front of you.

There are several different sections where you can pick up a plate full of dinner- portions already are set out for you- including the grill (burgers, fries, fish sticks, etc.), standard salad bar, the international section, pizzarette, sub and sandwich bar, and classics ("soul-warming, stick-to-yer-ribs cooking"). For those who prefer cows and the like in fields and not on their dinner plates, there is the vegan section, which provides over 130 different dishes in rotation. This is one of the best places to grab dinner or lunch, as the lineups elsewhere can be a bit excessive, and the food is healthy. It is also, for the most part, quite tasty; apparently a lot more can go wrong with a slice of country-fried steak than with a hummus baguette.

The setting in Leonard Caf, like the food service, is contemporary, with more of a restaurant style than a communal dining hall appearance. There are booths, bars and regular tables, and they all have a nice view of Lake Ontario- well, not all. An additional plus: the dessert bar, like a glorious island in the middle of a tumultuous sea, is located in the centre of the cafeteria, making for easy access to ice cream, saucy fudge cake, jello, fruit and other associated dishes.