Plate Debate has officially ended. Our eighth episode marked the finale of our biggest video series of the year. In the end, I tried 16 dishes, and we interviewed more than 100 students over the course of the semester.
Most people don’t know this, but Plate Debate was actually the brainchild of our Editor-in-Chief, Wade. Everytime I sat down to enjoy a meal or to get the opinions of diners, Wade was behind the camera taking care of all of the technical aspects. When he first approached me with the Plate Debate concept, we weren’t too sure how it would pan out or exactly what our mission was. Many of us at The Informer, including myself, had written articles about the dining services in the past, so we needed something that would make this segment stand out. Ultimately, it was the involvement of the students that turned Plate Debate into the success that it was. Not often enough had we previously included the raw opinions of the student body directly into our content. That ended up being a big overarching theme in a lot of our segments throughout this semester. Getting the students involved proved to be an excellent way to grow an audience for our segment and also get a final product that more accurately represented the real opinions students had on the University Commons.
Our end goal for Plate Debate was to collect enough data to track the majority opinion on the performance of our dining services. Our findings were pretty consistent the whole way through, with roughly 80% of the reviews getting smacks. But, it wasn’t an 80% smack every day. For example, the pasta bar at the saute station was our most highly rated dish, receiving 100% smacks and multiple 10/10 ratings. The beef with mushroom sauce, however, was one of the most highly critiqued dishes we reviewed, receiving nearly a 50-50 split of smacks and wacks.
The progression of opinions did trend upwards over the semester. In the beginning, students seemed bogged down by less than impressive performances from dishes like the stir fry and the szechuan beef. But in the end, students seemed much more satisfied by what was being offered, including the mac and cheese bar, the sweet and sour chicken, and especially the celebratory international dishes. We even made our way to PDR night for a bonus episode where we dined on delectable tacos bowls and rasta pasta! (Shoutout to dining services for inviting us). What was very clear is that the dining services can produce high quality and delicious meals, but not on an everyday basis. The highlights were consistently the chef’s choice meals, the international dishes, and the made to order items. The regular rotation is fine, but can make already divisive dishes increasingly monotonous.
Our final sentiments are that Plate Debate was a successful and enjoyable social experiment. We thank all of the courageous students that volunteered to voice their honest opinions. We also want to thank the University of Hartford’s Dining Services for allowing us to review their food and inviting us to showcase their more exclusive events. We hope you all enjoyed Plate Debate, because for us, it was a 10/10 smack.
