At USC, eating chicken fingers every Wednesday in Russell House is as much of a tradition as Homecoming Weekend, Tiger Burn and Sorority Bid Day.
In 2010, students consumed 46,600 pounds of chicken fingers, making the tradition so prominent that the task “gorge on chicken fingers every Wednesday for a month” was added as number 32 on student government’s USC Bucket List.
Fried Chicken Friday is another weekly culinary tradition started by students that Gamecocks have come to expect over the years. Additionally, the Grand Market Place staff has started Meatloaf Monday and Chicken Wing and BBQ Thursday in recent years.
“When you have fried chicken on Friday once every three weeks and the line is out the door you start thinking maybe people would like to have this more often,” said John Brasington, manager of Grand Market Place. “It’s not the most nutritious thing in the world, but it’s a great comfort food.”
Although the popularity level is nowhere near that of Chicken Finger Wednesday or Fried Chicken Friday, Meatloaf Monday was started roughly eight weeks ago to help offset the noticeable lack of comfort food in the menu. Several students were asking about meat loaf, which was previously not on the menu at all; University Dining decided that a specialty day was the perfect place to fit it in.
Chicken Wing and BBQ Thursday, which was started about a year ago, first started at Preston’s dining room for lunch. Soon enough, it became so popular that wings became a weekly item at Preston’s at Noon. The Russell House staff recently decided to extend it to Grand Market Place.
The menu for the entire semester is already mostly decided before students even arrive on campus. For every other day of the week, meticulous planning goes into the menu, with good reason: more than 12,000 meals are prepared each week at the Russell House.
“All the weeks are preplanned for the semester, based on what foods are available,” said Samantha Cuevas, marketing coordinator for USC Dining. “Adjustments are made for special events, and if we get local fruit and vegetables we can incorporate into a dish for something new and exciting.”
Sodexo and University Dining work with a student board of directors and university administrators to create the menu, while taking local availability into account.
“Our first concern is nutrition and available products or food,” Brasington said. “We have a team of culinary staff and nutritionists that put together a core for a national menu, and then on a local basis we work with that core to develop things that will work in the Russell House or anywhere else on campus.”
With the exception of specialty days, the menu at Russell House rotates every three weeks.
Every dish that was served during the fall semester will be put into Russell House dining’s computer system as the core menu for the spring semester, and dining staff will make changes based on which items were popular or unpopular.
But the menu isn’t the only thing that will change in 2014: Grand Market Place has hired a new executive chef.
“He’ll add a new fresh eye to the menu,” Brasington said. “We’ll see some changes in the springtime.”