Coming back from winter break for Duke’s 100th year, our gothic wonderland didn’t look much different than before, save for slightly fewer orange cones. One would think that after all the money and time Duke poured into tearing apart and reconstructing campus, we would at least have solved the issue of the small pond that forms in front of WU and Kilgo when it rains — alas. However, one positive has emerged from the rubble: It’s Thyme finally replaced Panda Express.
This restaurant swappage has not come without controversy. Word on the street is that this is a horrible decision, Duke hates its students, and the Good Old Days are gone. While I have been around here long enough to lament the departure of a time where the $5 deal was a full meal instead of two boiled eggs, one piece of string cheese and one piece of fruit, in this case, the change to our food options is positive.
I’ll start by saying I love bowl-themed restaurants — give me Chipotle, Sweetgreen, or Cava any day and I will be a happy girl. As a picky eater, I appreciate the ability to customize without seeming high maintenance. Further, the variety of plant-based toppings at It’s Thyme allows me to trick myself into — dare I say — enjoying eating my vegetables. Additionally, it has enough options that I don’t just order the same bowl every time, like I do at Sazon or Ginger + Soy. Plus, the employees are exceptionally nice.
The two main arguments I’ve heard against It’s Thyme are that it removes a connection to heritage for Chinese students and that it’s expensive. I understand the urge to indulge in a home-cooked meal while living on campus, but there are some problems with this. Namely, by design of the diverse liberal arts university: we all have different food cultures, you can’t cheaply mass produce home-cooked meals and authentic cuisine was never the goal of fast food restaurants — Panda included. In other words, by coming here, we’re agreeing that we’re going to have to learn to feed ourselves differently than we are used to, which is a difficult task.
I don’t intend to sound flippant about this, but I would never expect a Duke restaurant to serve schnitzel, spaetzle, or strudel — a few of the foods I associate closely with my roots. But before you get the wrong idea, my qualms with Panda were never in its type of cuisine, but that it serves entirely ultra-processed foods (UPFs) — save for the white rice — and I would have the same opinion if it were McDonald’s leaving campus.
Indeed, I would say that many students critique the restaurants serving cuisine similar to home-cooked meals — personally, I’m almost never satisfied when I get pasta from Il Forno. Food that is but a simulacrum of what we are familiar with can temporarily scratch an itch, but it will not address the root desire of wanting a real, home-cooked meal. Thus, the recent movement in Duke Dining towards more dietarily inclusive, healthy options — while it does, admittedly, seem a form of virtue signaling — is a net positive for us students.
Sadly, however, in America, our government and culture incentivize UPFs, making it such that whole foods and prepared meals made from real ingredients are more expensive on the front end. While you save money now on fast food — which you cannot deny that Panda is — you have to pay later with your health. Yes, it would be best if all of us could cook our own meals, but that’s just not realistic for busy college students living primarily in dorms, so we must do the best we can with what is available.
Yes, the healthier options on campus are more expensive, mirroring broader societal trends. In order to address inequalities which can stem from this, it would be great if Duke Financial Aid would do something similar for dining as they do for housing. As a student on significant aid, Duke pays for the cost difference of me to have a single room but would not increase my aid if I got a larger dining plan. In other words, I can live in a Hollows single for the same total cost as I would in a Keohane double, but if I were to choose food plan B instead of A, I would eat the cost.
Panda Express was less expensive than It’s Thyme, for sure, but when we compare It’s Thyme to other WU stalwarts, it’s pretty similar. In my experience this year, I tend to pay 11 or 12 dollars for lunch and dinner, maybe a bit more if I spring for salmon from Farmstead or J.B.’s. Compared to the cost of living in my rural Ohio hometown, frankly, everything on campus and in Durham is outrageously expensive, and if Duke did not pay for my board, I would feel incredibly guilty about spending so much money on food.
Now I am brought back to the point about home-cooked meals. I almost guarantee you, your family or whoever cooked for you growing up made meals out of ingredients rather than things like l-cysteine hydrochloride, caramel color, disodium guanylate or maltodextrin. I’m just copying and pasting these from the Panda Express ingredients list, but if you poke around on NetNutrition, you’ll probably find more of the same from many of the other restaurants on campus.
It’s Thyme’s entire idea is to provide an option on campus serving whole foods. The food items people are used to eating — like those historically obtained through hunting, gathering or cultivating — tend to be rather perishable and thus more expensive to use for commercial food purposes. Normal humans cooking at home often prepare meals with ingredients rather than the “edible foodlike substances” that comprise UPFs. No matter what your culture is, your ancestors did this because they did not have access to the ultraprocessed contaminants. No matter what type of cuisine it models, adding a restaurant that is trying to serve real food is an unambiguous win in my book.
If Duke’s recent centennial reminded me anything, it’s that the Duke brand is so comparatively young. Surprisingly, it’s not any older than my late grandparents. So much about this place is different now than it was in 1924. If anything, this should cause us to question aspects about our present that are still less than ideal, rather than lamenting the shifting currents of our university that have brought us to where we are today. I can only hope that come 2124 — if we ever make it there — and Duke’s bicentennial, students of the future are questioning why the university allowed its students to eat such nutritiously questionable options. I hope, as a student body, we can at least entertain the merits of swapping Panda Express for It’s Thyme rather than immediately spitting out gut reactions that shut down the possibility of more nuanced discourse.
Heidi Smith is a Trinity senior. Her column typically runs on alternate Mondays.
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