It is a truth locally acknowledged that the Rhode Island School of Design is cooler than Brown University. This encompasses all manner of things: clothing, people and, so I have heard, the food.
Unlike Brown’s street-accessible dining halls, RISD’s dining hall, The Met, is located behind swipe-access only doors and perched three stories above a private courtyard. If you want to eat there, you either have to be a RISD student or have an inside source. Fortunately, I had a generous accomplice to grant me access to the world of charcoal-smudged fingers and avant garde pants.
Upon entering, I was struck by the height of the ceilings, especially the two-story tall brick chimney with a wood-fired pizza oven at its base. To my left was a balcony sprinkled with twinkling lights, and an outstanding variety of chairs — red, orange, yellow, blue, wooden and metal — was scattered about the hall.
The Met has the typical features of a college dining hall. For instance, there’s a pizza line and a salad bar. You can get soup if you so please. But there are also some quirks. There’s a permanent miso soup dispenser and a drum-sized rice cooker that offers infinite quantities of steamed white rice. The grill station makes food to order, and, once you collect your meal, you can visit the condiment counter with its 15 sauces and six spices.
Orbiting the chimney, I filled two plates and a bowl with things to taste before finally settling in a yellow chair. I gravitated first to the chicken fried rice with kimchi, which had crispy edges and just a hint of sweetness. Scallions — little onion sprites — were generously sprinkled throughout. Although I didn’t actually find any chicken, I did excavate a delightful bite of cabbage. Satisfied and, frankly, impressed, I turned my attention to a fiery red pile of gochujang tofu. Cubes of fried tofu and caramelized onions boasted a generous coating of the spicy Korean fermented chili paste. Everything was well-salted, but the flavor was one-dimensional — mostly just gochujang.
The main entree offered this evening was a Japanese beef curry with rice. Chunks of beef and potato were folded into a savory yellow broth and decorated with a handful of fried shallots. The beef was not especially tender, but the potatoes were perfectly cooked and had absorbed the savory punch of the curry all the way through.
I took a moment to sip some of the organic black cherry soda — which tasted just like it sounds — before approaching the largest question mark on my plate. The roasted carrot, spiced yogurt, garlic, egg and cilantro pizza was a bit like a RISD student’s outfit in that I would never have thought to put it together myself. However — also like a RISD student’s outfit — it sort of worked. In one particular bite, I was delighted to discover an entire clove of roasted garlic, mellowed and tender. The egg, scrambled if you were wondering, was not overbearing, perhaps just unnecessary. Out of curiosity and confusion I finished the slice.
Meals should end on a sweet note and this one ended on three. The first, a chocolate cake, was fudgy, not too sweet and had a gentle cocoa flavor. A generous hand had dusted the top of the cake with powdered sugar while it was still warm to create a slightly crunchy topping. I moved right along to a thin oatmeal raisin cookie. It was almost everything that a cookie should be, complete with crisp edges and a chewy center. I would only add that there weren’t enough oats and too many raisins. I did grab one of the vegan ginger snaps to sample as well. Tough and chewy, the cookie failed to displace my skepticism towards vegan desserts.
Stomach full, I leaned back in my cheerful yellow chair. It was only then that I noticed: Unlike Brown’s dining halls, you won’t find salt and pepper shakers on the tables at The Met. The food is well-seasoned and they know it. I knew it too.
Why is the food at RISD so good? For one, the student body is relatively small with only about 2,000 undergraduates. Anyone who’s tried to scale up a recipe knows that it’s easier to make tasty food for fewer people. But I didn’t feel like this explained everything. Instead, RISD’s gourmet dining plan suggests something deeper about the school’s values. My meal at RISD felt like an argument that creativity is stoked by food that is not only delicious but also interesting.
Service: kind, attentive
Sound level: conversational
Recommended dishes: chicken fried rice with kimchi, chocolate cake
Hours: Monday-Friday 7 a.m.-9 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 8 a.m.-8:30 p.m.
★★★/5.
Eleanor Barth Wu’26 can be reached at eleanor_barth_wu@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
