Colleges rewrite the book on vegetarian cuisine - Culinary Currents

Vegetarians on college campuses were once looked upon as a small but radical group of students whose eating habits were dictated by their aversion to killing animals.

The conventional wisdom among foodservice directors was that if you give the college vegetarians a salad bar with tofu or pasta with a choice of sauces, they'd go away. However, conventional wisdom doesn't hold any more. The vegetarian population on college campuses has grown in both size and diversity, and their reasons are becoming more complex.

"This is not a fad or a trend," says Steve Simpson, assistant director of Campus Dining at the University of Missouri in Columbia. "This has become a lifestyle. It is a viable alternative diet that is growing in popularity."

Pete Napolitano, foodservice director at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., agrees. "What seems to be driving this is a health issue as much as an ethical or moral issue," he says. "Students are more likely to have been ingrained by their parents to cut down on meat-based proteins, and they are coming to campus armed with more information than ever to make sensible choices."

Vegetarianism has become so widespread in college foodservice that contract companies say they are often being asked on bid proposals what types of vegetarian entrees they offer. Indeed, as vegetarianism has become more accepted, vegetarians have begun to expect more respect. They don't want to be placated with macaroni and cheese or pasta with a choice of sauces.

On some campuses, according to Jan Key, nutritionist for Professional Foodservice Management, Jupiter, Fla., students are rebelling against meat analogs.

"What students are telling us is that they don't need to have vegetable sausage patties or soy hot dogs on the menu," Key says. "They say, `We don't eat meat, and we don't want to eat things that look like meat.' "

What they do desire is variety, and they want to have the unique needs of the vegetarian subgroups -- lacto-ovo-, ovo-lacto- and vegans -- to be satisfied.

When PFM wrote its latest menu cycle, it included 50 new entrees -- 31 of which are vegetarian. Among the most popular is vegetable curry and couscous, made with potatoes, carrots, onions, green beans, cauliflower, raisins and almonds and spicy red beans with crunchy rice, which uses onions, carrots, celery and sunflower seeds in the rice mixture.

New vegan entrees at PFM accounts include vegetable bulgur-rice pilaf and fettuccine with mexi-bean sauce. At the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Marriott Management Services brought in a commercial operator of a vegetarian restaurant to operate a unit in one of Plattsburgh's dining halls.

The Gardenside Cafe, from Burlington, Vt., serves between 10 percent and 15 percent of all the residents dining on campus at lunch and dinner, according to Marriott foodservice director Brian Dermody. Gardenside offers vegetarian pizza, entrees, grilled items, soups, salads and desserts -- all self-serve except for the grill station.

"The vegetarian cook also works the grill station, so he is available to answer students' questions," Dermody says.

With popular dishes like herby eggplant bake, Mexican stir-fry, quesadilla California style and spaghetti with seitan -- a protein-rich food made from wheat gluten and used as a meat substitute -- Gardenside is frequented by nonvegetarians as well, Dermody says.

At the University of Missouri, Steve Simpson says Campus Dining has experimented with a variety of pizzas, including a vegan pizza. The "cheeseless" pizza uses a nonfat cream cheese base and is "hearty on vegetables," Simpson explains.

Another popular pizza is Missouri's Mexican corn and pepper pizza.

At William Paterson College in Wayne, N.J., Sodexho assistant foodservice director Loren Shepard developed a vegan entree for every dinner in Sodexho's five-week menu cycle at the college. Shepard says the program, called Strictly Absolutely Veggie Entrees, has been in place since the spring of 1995. SAVE has a 10-percent participation rate, with vegans preferring rolled stuffed lasagna with kale, skillet bulgur in veggies with basil, wok-seared vegetables Dijon and pineapple bean pods.

At Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., an extensive health-food bar has been a staple of the resident dining program for 25 years. Eileen Coughlin, R.D., resident district manager for Flik International, says the bar is enormously popular, in large measure because an estimated 50 percent of the students at Sarah Lawrence are vegetarians.

"At the bar we feature a deli-style station that includes tuna and egg salad, hummus, grilled vegetables, a variety of cream cheese spreads, and peanut butter flavored with dates and apple cider," Coughlin says. "We also offer vegetarian soups on the bar, with most of them acceptable to vegans."

To maintain that goal while also providing variety, Flik uses soy or rice milk to make cream soups, Coughlin says.

Other popular dishes here are vegetable a la king, curried vegetable stew and grilled tofu with soba noodles.

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