Cafe Bon Appetit – University of Portland

It is of course overpriced for a college campus, then again this is a private University.
Everything is made from scratch here, and I must say that every burger I’ve had here has been delicious. The World station where they get to be creative is delicious, and the servers at that station are super friendly too. I’ve never had a bad meal there. The salad bar is amazing and delicious and there is plenty to choose from to build your salad. Great carving station, delicious weekend brunch and breakfast taco station. Coffee bar is wonderful.
Students are lucky to have the choices they do, especially since it’s all local and organic food. Yeah it’s gonna be a bit spendy, but you’re not eating in a boring cafeteria.

Monopoly at its best. Due to guarantee profit (students forced to have meal plan, no other ways to spend «points»), they don’t have incentive to create good value or good quality.
Now for food:
Imagine you’re ordering small portion fast food for sit in restaurant price. But remember, you gotta wait 30mins to get your food. When you get your food, it most likely will not satisfy your hunger. If you have this mindset, you’re fine.
Breakdown for food:
Pizza — ⁴⁄₅. Usually good. Sometimes it’s full of oil, but usually pizza is a decent choice.
Pasta — ¹⁄₅. It taste worse than leftovers
Global — 2.5÷5. This is where they try new stuff. Sometime good sometime disastrous.
Carve — ³⁄₅. Usually serve fat chicken and dry chicken. Those chicken probably never walk since its so damm fat.
Grill — ²⁄₅. Their staff are quite disorganized. Forget orders, left out an egg etc. Once they even left my burger party sitting there for 20min straight while he went inside the backkitchen.

I had two meals– one catered and one at the walk up. The walk up experience was amazing. So much fresh fruit, salad bars, burgers, etc. I was wowed by the ($ 7) Jamaican lamb curry served with cabbage and boiled plantains. Yum.
However the catering situation was the blandest meal I ever had. The salad wasn’t dressed, the chicken breast had something green on it leading me to think pesto? cilantro? but it tasted like nothing. The same with the pasta. It was red and it had maybe a basil leaf and a chunck of zucchini, but nothing. The desserts at the buffet were overwhelmingly sweet. I made a meal of the breads and butter.
The coffee bar is really, really expensive and it’s not like there’s a lot of choice in the hood. It’s here or walk about 1 – 2 miles.

Bön Appetit caters a similar-​sized university I attended just an hour south of here, and I was very happy with them there. I’m not sure what factors into this, but the location at UP seems to be significantly overpriced by comparison (at least by college student standards), and I avoid eating there despite its convenience.

I attended a wedding reception at UP catered by Café Bön Appetit and was very disappointed. The buffet food presentation was poor with very small platters on the table to feed 80 guests. The fruit platter was enough to feed 10 people at most. They ran out of food items quickly and did not replenish the buffet. The caterers charged $ 11 per person and placed about $ 1.00 worth of food out for each guest. I highly do NOT recommend hiring this company, unless you like feeling very cheated and very embarrassed. No stars is the correct rating.

Attended an evening symposium where Café Bön Appetit catered. Well done! Nicely presented, good variety of simple yet very tasty food. Meatballs in a sweet and sour sauce, warm spinach artichoke dip with bread, vegetable plate, and three choices of finger desserts (of which I of course had to have all three). That took care of dinner for me. Bartender with a sense of humor when I asked for ginger ale. We sure didn’t have food options like this when I was in college.

Bön Appetite offers a wide variety of foods, all soured using sustainable practices (locally/​regionally). Food is prepared from scratch and there is a wide variety of healthy options. They also cater to dietary needs (vegetarian, vegan, gluten free). My favorite is the salad bar, lots of fresh vegetables to choose from as well as premade salads and slaws that change daily.