Bon Appétit is a relative newcomer to Hillsdale’s campus, and a welcome one at that.
Bon Appétit introduced higher-quality food. It was locally-sourced, fresher, generally easier to identify, and assembled with greater care. But we lovers of tradition tended, at first, to look fondly on what once was: Saga, Inc. gave us more food, and gave it to us faster. It was familiar. Most importantly, it posed the question: how were we to reference Saga Steve?
Time passed and campus disposition changed. Bon Appétit was no longer a revolutionary agent. The old guard—those students who battled Mothra at dinner, who shouldered through the horde of football players for chicken nuggets, who ate many a cream-based soup and lived to tell the tale—have left campus and abdicated the dining hall.
Saga, Inc. was our ancien régime: venerable, reliable, and prone to occasional culinary oversight. Moths appeared in the salad. Lettuce remnants from meals gone by still clung to some silverware. Casseroles of dubious identity and origin populated the cafeteria line. Rare hamburger patties were all too common.
We now have two classes who have known only Bon Appétit. To them, this is the standing order. This is now the gastronomic ancien régime. Flyers encourage us to use the outdoor patio and alarms shriek when we attempt to do so. Insects appear from time to time and evidence is promulgated far and wide.
Were Bon Appétit a despot, its mistakes a train of abuses and usurpations evincing some design to reduce us to gastronomic poverty, we ought to throw off such administration and provide for ourselves differently. But it is not. It has made many improvements, and continues to do so.