6 BITES OF BYU

In reviews of six campus restaurants, the BYU Magazine staff offers tips for sampling BYU’s array of culinary choices.

Get BYU’s top two dining experts talking and you’d think they were city planners not culinary artists. “We look at BYU as a community of neighborhoods,” says Dean A. Wright, ’74, director of Dining Services. “Building community is what food is all about.”

Executive chef Robert W. Morgan, ’90, agrees. “Food is very communal,” he opines. “It’s not just eating; it’s an experience between people.”

From this philosophy the Dining Services staff has cooked up a plan to turn the 36,000 meals they serve daily into more than moments of mass consumption. They hope to generate opportunities for people to “gather and break bread together,” according to Wright. Creating “neighborhood” restaurants, developing fresh menu concepts, and cultivating friendly service, Dining Services has tried to live up to its motto: Great Food Is Just the Beginning.

Indeed, as the BYU Magazine staff discovered on a whirlwind tour of campus restaurants, delectable dishes and savory desserts are only the foundation of each restaurant’s distinctive flavor. Equally enticing were the service, attention to detail, and inviting settings. This blend of ingredients led to BYU Dining Services’ receiving the high honor of an Ivy Award from Restaurants and Institutions magazine in 2001.

Amid all our eating, we got a taste for the distinctive cultures of campus neighborhoods. From the nostalgic ambiance of the Creamery on Ninth to the upbeat tempo of the Marketplace Café to the cultured setting of the Skyroom, each restaurant allowed us to ruminate on the variety that characterizes BYU.

Following are our restaurant reviews along with helpful hints for those drawn to retrace our steps. Bon appétit!

—Peter B. Gardner, ’98, Associate Editor


Choose from the following restaurant reviews: Skyroom Restaurant, Marketplace Café, Museum Café, Creamery on Ninth, Pendulum Court, Cougareat, Cannon and Morris Center cafeterias, and a preview of the new Legends Grille (in the student athlete complex).

The BYU Magazine staff has gathered eight recipes from campus restaurants that you can try at home.

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