Campus dining has changed.

The renovated Marketplace opened in the McShane Campus Center at Rose Hill on September 3, unveiling brand-new menus, food stations, and a variety of seating options to create a dramatically improved dining experience. The renovation was supported in part by a $5 million grant from New York state.

Here’s a taste of what students are experiencing.

Vegan and Vegetarian Options

The first thing visitors encounter is the vegetarian and vegan station, which sets the tone for the new Marketplace. By using fresh ingredients that have a low impact on the environment, the station is designed to help Fordham lower its carbon footprint.

“Students are really gravitating towards more plant-based options,” said Deming Yaun, Fordham’s dining contract liaison. “It’s a statement of freshness that the station is making that is carried through the whole facility.”

Space for Everyone

Seating arrangements are diverse: booths, tall tables, long tables, and benches are situated throughout, welcoming everyone from single diners looking to work through lunch to teams and other big groups gathering for a communal meal. One dining room can be sectioned off for private gatherings. Altogether, the space can accommodate nearly 800 diners.

Chef’s Table

The chef’s table adds a bit of culinary theater to the dining hall, offering a front-row seat to cooking demonstrations and a chance to order from a seasonal menu featuring special tastings.

Restaurant Row

Diners can choose from the Iron Skillet, featuring made-to-order meals all day; Trattoria Italian Kitchen, with hot-from-the-oven pizza; Ignite grill; and Sweet Nothings, with house-made desserts.

Halal Station

New York City is known for its halal carts, and now Rams can get an authentic version of this street food without leaving campus. “It’s nice that it’s going to be an everyday option,” said Andres Perez, a Fordham senior and a pitcher on the baseball team whose go-to halal meal is chicken and rice with a salad. The Marketplace also offers kosher meals upon request.

Sustainable Eating

Several meals in the Marketplace are certified climate-friendly by the World Resources Institute. They’re marked with a badge so students can easily identify items that have a low environmental impact.

The space, located on the first floor of the McShane Campus Center, has been transformed to make it easier to create fresh, customized dishes in an open environment while providing ample space for students and staff to socialize and recharge. The renovation is among the final phases of the McShane Center construction project.

There also was a celebration of the space on Monday, Sept. 16, filled with special offers and food demonstrations.

New Stations, New Dishes

Visitors to the new Marketplace will be greeted by nine stations, covering cuisine ranging from halal, deli, and grill to pizza, salad, vegan, allergen-friendly, and dessert.

Deming Yaun, University dining contract liaison, touted a variety of new dishes, including a ramen meal with roasted pork, baby bok-choy, carrots, scallions, and chili garlic sauce, as well as a sautéed shrimp and spaghetti dish with chipotle cream sauce. He said that in the previous space, roughly 30% of food was prepared in front of students; in the new space, nearly 70% of the food is prepared in the open.

Starting Off Fresh

The first station that visitors encounter upon entering, the vegetarian and vegan station, sets the tone for the new space. Just as supermarket customers are greeted by aisles of fresh produce, Marketplace customers will be greeted by everything they need to put together delicious plant-based dishes. The dishes are part of a commitment to help Fordham lower its carbon footprint by using ingredients that have a low impact on the environment.

In recent years, “students are really gravitating towards more plant-based options,” Yaun said. “It’s a statement of freshness that the station is making that is carried through the whole facility.”

Space For Everyone

Seating arrangements are diverse: booths, tall tables, long tables, and benches are situated throughout, welcoming everyone from single diners looking to work through lunch to big groups gathering for a communal meal. One dining room can be sectioned off for private gatherings. Altogether, the space can accommodate nearly 800 diners.

One addition that foodies will want to keep an eye on is the Chef’s Table. The space will serve as a hub for cooking demonstrations and a place for chefs to share their experimental dishes.

A Place to Refuel and Relax

Audrey Hayes, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who got an early tour of the space as part of a student group, said she was eager to try the fresh pasta. She said she could see herself grabbing a booth by the entrance.

“When I study, I like to have a little bit of noise, so I find myself studying in the cafe sometimes,” she said. 

Andres Perez, also a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, was excited to see a table big enough that the baseball team could use for a post-practice gathering. Perez, who pitches for the Rams, was intrigued by the halal station, where he’ll be able to get chicken and rice with a salad.

“It’s nice that it’s going to be an everyday option now,” he said.

James Serruto, FCRH ’24, who was chairman of the United Student Government Facilities and Dining Committee last year, said that transparency of food preparation was a big concern for students, who met with administrators weekly while the Marketplace was under construction. 

He likes that the space will create opportunities for students to get to know the kitchen staff. 

“It’s very easy to go over to the chicken fingers and fries, but when you know that somebody’s preparing a steak in front of you or preparing a healthy salad, it builds a sense of trust and understanding,” he said.

This piece was updated on September 30.

The grant, which comes from the Higher Education Capital Match Program (HECap), is the second one of its kind that the University has received for the Campus Center.

It will help fund the ongoing transformation of what has become a vibrant hub for the Rose Hill campus since it opened last year.

The Heartbeat of Campus Life

The center, which nearly doubled in size when the 71,000-square-foot addition was finished in February 2022, features multiple spaces dedicated to making the campus a welcoming place for all. 

A first-floor lounge features a pool table and plenty of couches and chairs for relaxing, while the ground floor has additional spaces to gather, recharge, and exercise in a state-of-the-art 20,000-square-foot fitness center.

The upper floors are occupied by the offices of Career Services and the Center for Community-Engaged Learning, while a light-filled arcade that opened in August makes for seamless traveling to the athletic facilities. The building is also designed to LEED Silver level specifications, with triple-glazed windows, automatic lighting controls, recycled materials, and, in a first for the Rose Hill campus, heat recovery mechanical ventilation wheels, which reuse the building’s heat in cooler months.

Dining in the Age of Customization

When the new Marketplace opens in the fall, it will feature nine different stations, covering cuisine ranging from halal, deli, and grill to pizza, salad, vegan, allergen-friendly, and dessert.  

One of the most dramatic changes will be the way dishes will be prepared directly in front of customers. 

As an example, Deming Yaun, university dining contract liaison, noted that at the vegan/vegetarian station, the centerpiece will be a large, oval kitchen stocked with ingredients that are washed, prepped, and cut as needed for every dish, some of which will be sent to decks of ovens in a nearby kitchen to be “finished off” and returned. The Halal/Za’atar kitchen, for instance, will feature dishes such as Mansaf-stewed lamb with yogurt and mint, salmon in fig leaves, and grilled beef and lamb skewers, all prepared in the open.

This allows for customized dining that students expect.

“Over the years, we have been moving food preparation into or as close to the serving area as possible, but this takes it to a whole new level,” he said.

A Hub For Community

The new Marketplace space will be more than just a place for sustenance. Michelle Burris, interim vice president for student affairs, said she expects it will become as much a locus of activity as the rest of the Campus Center. 

“We refer to the McShane Center as almost the living room of our campus where students can gather,” she said. “A fully renovated Marketplace is going to make it even more of a destination for students not only to eat but to be in community with one another.”

Lesley Massiah-Arthur, associate vice president of the Office of Government Relations and Urban Affairs and special assistant to the president, said community building was key to winning the grant, which was awarded in September.

Massiah-Arthur, the author of the grant application, said a grant of this size is only distributed to projects that benefit the broader public.

“I was thinking about how the University was coming back from the pandemic, and I started to think about the importance of food and dining together,” she said. 

As such, Massiah-Arthur cited not only an academic study that showed the benefits of communal dining but also highlighted how a dining facility will make it easier for Fordham to host outside groups for gatherings where food will be served. Next year, for example, the Bronx District Attorney’s office will be hosting a two-day forum at the Campus Center with other U.S. Attorneys General on gun violence prevention.

“Being able to open up the University again is essential to who we are not only as a university but as an anchor institution for the region,” she said. 

Benefiting the Environment and Local Economy

Even before it opens, the renovation will have a positive economic impact on the Bronx. It will generate approximately 250 union jobs over the course of the contract, and 25% of those jobs will be filled by local businesses.

The university will also work with local businesses to implement a new waste management system. All disposable containers will be fully compostable, and working with Bronx-based businesses to meet its composting goals,  Fordham will divert approximately 230,670 pounds of food waste a year from landfills.

Where Friendships Form

Ben Medeiros, FCRH ’22, a student in the mental health counseling program at the Graduate School of Education, was commuting to the Rose Hill campus when the McShane Center opened last year. It was just long enough a walk that he preferred to stay on campus between classes.

“I didn’t want to walk home every day after class. I thought, ‘Let me just chill here before my next club meeting.’ You want to get out of your dorm room or your apartment and sit there,” he said. “I made better friends there than I ever did anywhere else.”

—Additional reporting by Chris Gosier.