Instagram account @5chefs2dininghalls engages Geneseo students on food quality

Student dissatisfaction with the dining halls have been publicly discussed for the past several semesters, if not longer. Students experience persistent difficulty in finding quality, healthy, and even safe food on campus. While the efforts of Campus Auxiliary Services (CAS) and dining hall staff are publicized almost weekly through emails from CAS administration, students find these marginal improvements to be mediocre at best. 

Some dissatisfied students were moved by the food served by CAS, and created an Instagram called @5chefs2dininghalls last November. This group of anonymous students rate the dining hall food and spread awareness about the quality of food in the dining halls. 

“The chefs created this account because of our general distaste with the dining hall,” the account explains. “We would always critique our food while trying to eat it and thought that we should share our thoughts with other dining hall goers to see if they agreed with us.”

The Instagram account currently has over four hundred followers, indicating that one in ten students at Geneseo are subscribed to the account. The account regularly posts their opinions and critiques of dining hall food, including photos of the disappointing features of the food served at Geneseo by CAS.

One post from Apr. 25, 2021 showed an image of some crumb cake, presumably from a dining hall at Geneseo, with a live insect crawling in it. The post reads “A live bug crawling in a piece of cake. I’m utterly disturbed…This is the food you’re consuming daily, knights. We can’t tolerate this any longer. The people must take a stand and that’s exactly why we as 5chefs2dininghalls are here. We are the movement. We must keep working to make a change.”

The chefs live off-campus, so recently, they have found it difficult to make it to the dining halls and see how the food is. However, that doesn’t stop them from having very valid grievances.

“The other grievances we have with CAS are the usual. Hair in the food, bugs on the dishes, general disarray in the kitchens. What pains us most is that the smoothie station is a lot different than it was last year and not customizable or available for online ordering.”

Many students have also experienced similar dissatisfaction in relation to the smoothie station in Mary’s, a component of the upstairs portion of Mary Jemison (MJ). Whether it is the lack of customization, or even accusations of not properly cleaning the blenders when making smoothies for students with allergies, few are happy with how the smoothies have turned out this semester. 

The chefs have a few final messages for their fans and for CAS. “To our beloved 5chefs fans, aka our fellow sous chefs #dababy, we would be nowhere without you.”

“[CAS] has a lot to fix still. We will never be friends but we hope we can become allies and create change for the bettering of campus life. While we don’t have many credentials, we have a lot of good opinions! Good night, and good dining XOXO, the 5chefs.”

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