By Emma Sinai-Yunker
sinaiyun@grinnell.edu
Spencer Grill, formerly known as and still fondly called The Grille, made some drastic changes to their menu at the start of this semester.
Recently, the outtakes menu has changed and expanded. Outtakes went from a program rotating six to eight meals to one that rotates 11 meals. This allows the Grill to ensure that no meal is served on the same day two weeks in a row.
“Originally the thought of outtakes was just to be a ‘once in a great while’ meal replacement, like grabbing a sack lunch on the run to meetings,” said Mary Kirk, Assistant Director of Dining Services. “But it turns out that some people would get a meal there once a day, so it was just repeat, repeat, repeat all the time. So we’re trying to do something different. We have very little space to do it in, but we’re trying to do as well as we can.”
After conducting a survey last year, the Dining Services staff found that students wanted bigger, more substantial meals for their outtakes. The new entrees on the outtakes menu include a beef brisket sandwhich, a Southwestern Tofu Wrap and a fruit, cheese and bagette bowl.
Alyssa Manz ’13 frequents the Grill and, in her opinion, her fellow students greeted the changes to the outtakes with approval.
“I wouldn’t say [the meals are] necessarily better, but they definitely have more variety than before, and the portions seem bigger,” Manz said. “They seem to be pretty popular. Today there was a line all the way out of the Grill.”
Along with the outtakes, the regular menu has gone through some changes as well. New items on the regular menu include nachos, fries and—the most popular—a BBQ chicken sandwich with bacon. The fries, which have been a big hit, did not get a thumbs-up from Manz.
“They were very undercooked fries, which is too bad,” Manz said.
These new entrées seem to be taking the place of last year’s addition of big pizzas. There was a rumor that the pizzas were discontinued because members of the basketball team ordered six large pizzas just minutes before closing time one night last semester. When the Grill Staff refused (the policy is to stop serving the pizzas after 11:30 p.m.), they complained to Dining Services (or in some versions of the story, straight to President Kington), which people believe resulted in the change to the menu.
Kirk remembers being told of the incident.
“I didn’t know specifically who they were, I just knew we had a problem with some customers one night and never heard anything more about that,” Kirk said. “But no, that had nothing to do with the pizzas.”
The reason the pizzas were discontinued comes down to inconvenience. They were only selling an average of 2 ½ to 3 pizzas a day, and with all of the work, it cost more to make than they were getting back.
The menu for the Grill will be subject to change in the coming year as well, especially as tastes change over the years.
“We’re always open to new ideas,” Kirk said. “Every year it’s different. Every year the student demographic changes and so we try to see what is going to be a hit this year. Some years it’s chicken sandwiches and some years it’s paninis. So this year we’re just trying to see what is popular. We want to have what students are interested in having.”
