D-Hall Creations

Hi everyone!

Isabella Ahmad and Leah Cohen here, your new D-hall Creations writers. Since our prep year all those years ago, we have enjoyed meals together—whether in the dining halls, out and about town or over our summers spent in Boston. Now, we are seniors and we are hungry. After four years of navigating both Weth and Elm, we think we have this food thing down. It’s time to share our wisdom. Through our tenure as Creation writers, we plan to review restaurants, different foods in D-hall and our favorite top-secret (until now) hacks. Follow us on this journey to make the most of our Exeter eating experiences.

We’re not here to tell you which dining hall is better (Weth), as each one brings different delicious options to the table. Today’s hacks can and should be used across both halls—we don’t discriminate. Today we have for you all a menu of a three course meal: a light pasta with fresh greens, a juicy drink and a gourmet ice cream to top it all off.

Take a bowl and fill it with a pasta of your choice. We recommend a spaghetti or linguine (preferably not multi-grain), but any of D-hall’s wide selection of everyone’s favorite carbohydrate works.

Drizzle with olive oil, toss in some arugula from the salad bar, sprinkle some parmesan cheese and mix together. If you’re in a particularly flavorful mood, grind some black pepper in or sprinkle on chilli flakes. Close your eyes and take a bite of our pasta. Feel like you’re in Italy? Perfect. That’s probably because most restaurant cooks in Rome are Bengali—we have the inside scoop. Dying for more? That’s normal, don’t worry.

Next we have a little something to wash it all down. The juice machines can be a bit intimidating but luckily we have our mixing down to a science. Enter Exeter Mixology 101. Grab a glass, mug, bowl—whatever you fancy. Head to the machines and fill up on every juice. The more the better. It’s taken us four years to ace the ratio, don’t panic if you don’t get it on the first go. It may help to go in with a race mentality: rapidly slide your cup under the juice-spout-things in a single, fluid motion as you hit the buttons. 

Finally, we have our gourmet frozen treat. Something you should know about us is we love watching food videos almost as much as we love to eat food. Sometimes we do both at the same time. Disclaimer: We do not recommend. It’s dangerous. Something that has been coming across our Instagram feeds a lot has been soft serve ice cream topped and mixed with cereals. This one is an easy one to impress your friends or crush with, as well as to put on a job application for an ice cream shop later on. We suggest a bowl for this one rather than a cone. Armed with your hollow hemisphere in one hand and glorious soup spoon in the other, prepare to conquer the cereal options. Of course, the cereal of choice is up to you. However, if you’re looking for a sweet dessert we’re advocates for sugary cereals (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Krispies etc.) Fill the bowl with a little cereal and crush it up next to the ice cream machine and pick your flavor. After swirling, mix in the cereal on the bottom of the cup and go back to the cereal container to top off with more cereal. While this is happening feel free to film a video to submit to a food page on Instagram. It will probably be rejected since you’re still an amateur, but it’s worth a shot for 15 minutes of fame.

We understand that navigating the dining halls can be hard. We’ve got you covered. We are chefs in the making. Try not to starve between now and our next column in two weeks. This is just the beginning of our Dining Hall Domination.

Stay hungry my friends.

Isabella and Leah <3