University of Oklahoma food

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University of Oklahoma Campus Restaurants

With school about to start in Norman at The University of Oklahoma, I have let Miss Mae, a senior at that fine school, take over. She knows this campus pretty well and loves talking about the restaurants. So if you visit the campus or if you have students there, check out this review. Enjoy and Boomer Sooner.

Cafeterias

Couch Cafeteria – Couch Cafeteria is the largest and the oldest of the cafeterias on campus. It features an assortment of small restaurants offering a variety of dining options, including barbecue, Asian, Mexican, American comfort food, Italian, Greek, and the world’s only all-you-can-eat Chick Fil A. There are also two dessert options: Sooner Sweets, which offers bakery-style desserts, and a small ice cream booth. Each restaurant is unique and offers its own standout dishes. I personally enjoy the beef and cheese burritos from the Mexican booth, which also has good beef empanadas. I also enjoy the buffet style American section, which offers a build-your-own hot dog station and mac and cheese that always makes a bad day better. Couch Cafeteria – 9/10

Residential Colleges Dining Hall – The Residential Colleges Dining Hall, as the name implies, is connected to the Residential Colleges, Dunham College and Headington College. Though much smaller than Couch, this cafeteria is able to make use of its small space to give diners plenty of options. These include two made-to-order grills, where burgers and hot dogs can be ordered, a personal pizza station, a pasta bake station, a burrito station, and a panini station. Outside of this is the buffet style section, which includes a menu that rotates daily. I personally recommend the chicken enchiladas and the orange chicken, which are some of my favorites to get on a weekend visit. The atmosphere is flawless, often considered similar to Hogwarts. Residential Colleges Dining Hall – 9.5/10

Cross Village

Credo Kitchen – Credo Kitchen is a restaurant that offers basic American comfort food, with an emphasis on the word “basic”. As a person that once worked there, I can tell you that the kitchens are not the cleanest place in the world, and the food tends to taste like broken dreams and sadness. In the past few years, their menu has dropped to very few things (mostly due to their inability to keep the place staffed), leaving diners with very few options. The burgers taste like cardboard, partially due to the lack of spices kept in the kitchens, and partially due to the unbuttered, grocery store brand toasted buns. The chicken strips and the corn dogs begin their lives in the frozen food aisle before they are dumped in a deep fryer and paired with a side of unsalted fries or a tiny cup of mac and cheese that tastes like undercooked noodles dumped in a pot of melted Kraft singles. I have heard reports of people that enjoy this place but I am unable to understand the appeal. However, as long as the kitchen is not on fire and the ticket printer is actually working, they will be quick with your order. Credo Kitchen – 2/10

Glow Kitchen – Glow Kitchen is Cross’ version of the American health food restaurant, offering salads, wraps, and smoothies. Most of the wraps consist of chicken and lettuce, with varying toppings to give different flavors. However, Glow Kitchen’s biggest wrap flaw is lack of any form of customization. The workers are not allowed to add anything or to substitute anything which, according to the management, is due to the high price of the ingredients. The salads, on the other hand, are fully customizable, only for the smoothies to be subjected to the same policy. If you are planning to grab lunch from Glow Kitchen, make sure you are a fan of lettuce, as there is a very high lettuce ratio in everything but the smoothies. I recommend the chicken bacon ranch wrap. Glow Kitchen – 4/10

Milkflower Gelateria – There is not much to say about Milkflower Gelateria. It is a small gelato place and is immensely popular amongst the student body. Its weakness: it is almost never open. It is often teased at the beginning of the year, remaining open for the camps and trainings that go on before classes start, but once everything stabilizes into the school year, we are lucky if it is open once a week. Whether this is due to supply issues, maintenance issues, lack of profitability, or some other factor, it is an event when it is open. If you catch it at one of these times, I recommend the espresso mocha flavor. Milkflower Gelateria – 7/10

Basic Knead – Basic Knead is, in the opinion of this exhausted college student, the best place to eat on the entire campus. It is a restaurant offering personal pizzas, pasta bakes, calzones, and wings, with the pasta bakes taking the crown as the best food available at the school and, quite possibly, the best food available at any school all around the country. What makes these dishes so wonderful is the layer of cheese that is baked over the top, as well as full customization options. You can pick your pasta, sauce, and three toppings, and every dish comes with a healthy serving of that wonderful mozzarella. Basic Knead – 1000/10

Student Union

Quiznos – Offers full Quiznos menu. Quick Service. Quiznos – 10/10

Chick Fil A – Offers limited Chick Fil A menu. Quick Service. Chick Fil A – 10/10

Baja Fresh – Offers full Baja Fresh menu. Quick Service – Baja Fresh – 10/10

Crossroads – Crossroads is a burger restaurant and one of the oldest surviving food locations on campus. Offering a full range of food from burgers to steak fingers, Philly cheese steaks to grilled cheeses, Crossroads is a quick and easy place to get a good lunch in-between classes. I have many go-to meals here, with my personal favorite being the mushroom Swiss burger. There are so many mushrooms on this burger that it is almost impossible to see the meat beneath them. My other favorite meal from here is the steak finger basket. It comes with five juicy steak fingers, a pile of curly fries (the restaurant’s staple), and a choice of sauce. I usually choose the barbecue sauce, but I have been told that the honey mustard is also very good. Most meals here come with a drink, but a substitution for a milkshake is also very good. Crossroads – 11/10

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Food, Oklahoma

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Food Friday: Basic Knead

I don’t often get to eat on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, but when I get to Norman, I try to stop by Basic Knead. This is a small university run cafe that specializes in personal pizzas and pastas.

I learned about it last year when Mae was a freshman. She was trained to work there just in case someone called out. Soon I was hearing about the pasta she was eating almost every night and I wanted to try it. So one Saturday night last year, we drove down and got our own personal pasta dishes. The have several options but I went with a penne pasta, drizzled with alfredo, then added pepperoni, mushrooms, and olives. After a topping of cheese, the dish is placed in a brick oven to be fired. After a wait, my pasta dish was delivered and it was glorious. The pasta was perfectly cooked and the cheese was melted crisp. On my next trip, I got a personal pizza. This was prepared similarly, personal sized crust, with alfredo, pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, and topped with cheese. Baked in the same fired oven, this pizza was just as good as a pizza you would get at Hideaway (and much better than the national pizza places).

Basic Knead was her go to dinner spot for the fall semester but it was shut down in the spring due to not enough employees. Mae was anxious when she went back to campus this fall, would her beloved Basic Knead be open again. Fortunately it is and she says it’s just as good as last year. So if you find yourself on campus and looking for some pasta or pizza, try Basic Knead. You can find it south of Lindsey in Cross Village.

Address: 1695 Asp Ave., Norman.

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Food, Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma

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Coffee Corner: Starbucks (OU Student Union)

Starbucks is a classic in the coffee shop community. With hundreds of stores across the country, they are dedicated to serving quality coffee to their customers and creating new and trendy products for them to try. I personally am a regular at the Starbucks in the OU Student Union. This store recently moved to a new, larger location, as their previous store was small and cramped, not good for all of the students waiting to order. Their new location is larger than any Starbucks I have personally ever been in, with carved wooden seats and glass walls giving a view into the primary hallway of the Student Union. My personal order is always the Crispy Grilled Cheese, which has a mix of cheeses on sourdough bread, topped with a layer of crispy baked cheese. My usual drink is a simple mocha, which is sweeter than any other coffee shop I have been to. I’m there so often they know my name and start preparing my order before I even get to the counter. They offer all of the typical items on the Starbucks menu, and their friendly staff is ready to serve whatever you are feeling that day. This is only a review for the Starbucks at the Student Union of the University of Oklahoma. Not all are the same and there are many locations to choose from now. Written by Mae.

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Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Food Friday: The Hive

So I mentioned in my review of The Bookmark Cafe that my daughter, Mae, worked here on her first semester at OU. The Hive is a small cafe in a larger complex called Cross Village. In this same building is Acre Provisions, a grocery store just for college kids, and Basic Knead, a walk-up restaurant that serves pizza and pasta. All 3 spaces run together on the ground floor with apartment-like dorm rooms above.

The Hive is set up the same way The Bookmark Cafe is- they serve different coffee drinks along with light snacks. There is plenty of space to sit, not only indoors but in the outdoors area as well. They are also in Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, so you will get drinks like you find at Starbucks. You will also find students working here as well. All of the times we stopped by in the fall of 2021, we had great service and the drinks were always good. I will also give them 5 strips of bacon. They are located south of Lindsay Street on Asp in the Cross Village complex (southeast of the towers). Can’t really see it from the road, if you find Acre Provisions, it’s around the corner.

Now a bit of the history behind The Hive- Cross Village was opened in the fall of 2018. It was a new concept at OU, the dorm apartments were on the top floors while the ground level was just for restaurants, shops, and other businesses. This was originally to cater to upper-class students at OU. Cross Village is further south of the well-known dorm buildings Walker, Adams, and Couch, so the older students weren’t as close to the younger freshmen. Cross Village took the place of the original Cross Center, “The Men’s Quadrangle” dormitory built in 1952. Cross Center had fallen into disrepair and was mostly used as storage, so then a plan was developed in 2016 to replace the older buildings. Cross Village was supposed to be a public-private collaboration but by the end of the first full school year there were clear problems. Cross Village never filled to full occupancy with only 30 percent of the units rented out to students. With a legal dispute now on the horizon, all restaurants and shops were closed on July 30, 2019. Over the next two school years, there was plenty of legal wrangling and by May 2021 a new entity stepped up to help the university run Cross Village. To get the occupancy up, freshmen were now allowed to move into the new complex. After a two-year absence, all restaurants and shops were able to reopen. The Hive has stayed busy throughout this time, catering to students who live on campus. (If you want a full run down on all the legal and financial information, just Google it. I could write a book with all that went down in the building of Cross Village.)

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Food, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Food Friday: The Bookmark Cafe

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you would know that my contributing writer Mae has been absent. Well, she had to get through a rigorous high school schedule and now that she has graduated (PC Pirate class of ’21) she is studying at the great University of Oklahoma (proud 3rd generation Sooner). To help pay for this new adventure in education, she is working for food services as a barista. Her first semester she spent at The Hive, a coffee shop on south campus (more on it in another post) but now she is at The Bookmark Cafe in the first lower level of Bizzell Memorial Library.

This is just a small coffee shop, very similar to the ones you see in bookstores, where they have coffee, lattes, frappuccinos, along with light sandwiches and pastries. Last Sunday was my first visit and I was impressed, the space that had once been where the newspapers and magazines were kept was transformed into a study lounge with separate rooms for groups. Bookmark Cafe has a large area with tables and booths for group or individual study. They are part of Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, where they do serve up the same drinks that you can find at a Starbucks. Many of the pastries are cooked on site with the salads and sandwiches coming from Cow On the Fly. I didn’t get a chance to try any of the food yet, because of the snowstorm the previous week, the food delivery hadn’t come in yet. The double chocolate chip frappuccino that I had was awesome though. The staff is all students, they were all friendly and happy to be at Bookmark.

Now for some history- there was nothing like this when I was a student at OU in the early 1990’s (BA in Journalism, ’94). The coffee shop craze hadn’t hit Oklahoma yet. I guess there were some around but to me, coffee was just something that my grandparents drank. I had never heard of a frappuchino, latte, or macchiato. Bizzell Memorial Library was built in 1928 for the growing university and expanded, first in 1958, then again in 1982. Lower level 1 is part of the 1982 addition. Like I mentioned earlier, it held the periodicals. I used to sit at the microfilm readers and journey through the past with their newspaper collection. The Bookmark Cafe officially opened for the spring semester 1998 to give students a quiet place to study. The official grand opening was held on February 11, 1998 (I didn’t know this information until Wednesday of this week as I was researching, so the fact I’m publishing this on the same date 24 years later is just a coincidence). In August of 2013 construction began to transform the space into the study area it is now, Bookmark Cafe was temporarily moved but returned to its now larger location in September 2014 with a ceremony held on November 7, 2014, to mark the reopening of the lower level. In March 2020, it closed, not to reopen until January 2022.

Overall I will give them 5 strips of bacon, just for the fact that my child works there, but I would like to try more of their menu items. Project for the rest of the semester. So if you find yourself in Norman and near campus, stop into the historic library and grab a treat.