Campus, New York Food Caters to Health Nuts

How many locavores do you know?

Buzzwords in food this year were “green,” “fresh,” and “local.” With the openings of restaurants like Market Table, Craft, and our very own Community Food & Juice, the emphasis has been on using the freshest ingredients from the Greenmarket to create inventive menus that fluctuate with the seasons.

While it was initially unclear whether or not Community’s fresh food—and corresponding high prices—would fly among the starving students of Morningside, its popularity has recently skyrocketed. This year, the Upper West Side was hit with a wave of uncharacteristically delicious cuisine, a change that is keeping its residents eating close to home as well as drawing in outsiders.

Following the leader, Pertutti was (not so) sadly shuttered in February and replaced by Campo, an Italian trattoria specializing in grilled pizza and featuring plentiful olive oil and goat cheese.

Unfortunately, though, Greenmarket food is no longer the only pricey fare around. An economic recession, the falling value of the dollar, and international food shortages linked to environmental causes are sending the prices of ingredient staples like wheat, rice, and corn soaring. As a result, the bottom line is rising for restaurateurs and consumers alike.

The price for a slice of pizza from Koronet has gone up, as have the prices of bread, milk, eggs, and other supermarket necessities. As scoring a deal has become increasingly important, Columbia has opened itself up to the outside culinary world: Off-campus Flex has finally arrived, and can now be used at locations including Nussbaum & Wu, Westside Market, and Fairway.

The Columbia Shuttle has even starting making extra stops twice an hour on weekday evenings to get students back and forth to the discounts Fairway offers. In the quick-service world, Starbucks lattes became “skinny,” and frozen yogurt got bigger than ever this year. After subsisting on Tasti-D-Lite for years just because Carrie Bradshaw did, New Yorkers (and, more recently, Columbia students) discovered the phenomenon that is Pinkberry, and forked over their cash mostly because Lindsay Lohan and every other Beverly Hills baby did.

New York can’t let a trend go on too long without capitalizing on it, and the tangy taste of plain frozen yogurt seems to be everywhere these days, from Red Mango (right across the street from Pinkberry on Bleecker Street), to Barnard’s Hewitt Dining Hall, to the new gelateria Grom on 76th Street and Broadway, to the old standbys, Bloomingdale’s and Zabar’s.

On campus, John Jay seriously reconsidered its health-consciousness, but didn’t score many more points in the taste category. Ferris Booth, on the other hand, continues to evolve and expand its offerings, and now has made-to-order personal pizzas and smoothies alongside its newly-designed hot entrées that are both healthier and more appetizing.

Café 212, while not hugely innovative on the choices side, has a rotating daily special menu and changes what is in the refrigerated case every once in a while. Naked Juice has become a staple and a huge seller, but Vitamin Water has been replaced by lower-calorie Gatorade products.

JJ’s was serving up food on Fridays for a while, but after many e-mails and surveys and less-than-inspiring turnouts, chicken fingers once again became a thing only for weekdays—and drunk Thursdays.

The cherry on top of this year’s food trends has been the fight over New York’s new law, which requires all restaurants with more than 15 locations nationwide to post calorie information on menus for all dishes (and drinks). After a long process in which the New York State Restaurant Association sued—claiming that the law was a violation of free speech rights and would make menus harder to read—a federal judge threw out the suit and the law went into effect in late April.

So as May turns into bikini season, you might want to think twice about snacking on a Starbucks bran muffin.