Foothill

Wow! This is so much better than I expected. It is THE best dining hall on campus. There are so many options, fresh salad bar, fresh fruit, and the workers here are very nice. The food here is so good that there is a line out the door every single day. I personally recommend their tacos, spinach and gorgonzola pasta, mushroom cream pasta, and chicken tikka masala. The passionfruit orange juice and guava juice is also really good. Their chocolate chunk brownies are to die for! I love foothill dining! I highly recommend coming here and you get a lovely view while eating your dinner.

TL;DR: Yet another generic college cafeteria serving subpar food.Thoughts:I came here with a friend for lunch. All the college cafeteria staples were there: cereals, various kind of beverages, etc.The chicken was fine, not the best but it's neither too dry nor too bland. However, the coleslaw was quite ... disgusting: my friend couldn't even finish 10% of her coleslaw.

Among Cal Dining's facilities, very few have developed their processes with the customer experience in mind. With that being said, Foothill Dining Commons is by no means a paragon of good food service, but it serves as a good starting point.Firstly, there are many entrances into Foothill. You'll know where to enter if you've been there before, but it's not all that apparent.The layout is by no means ideal. You swipe in your card, and you can choose to either go straight to the seating facilities or to the right to get food. Little known is the fact that there is another seating facility past the bussing station, both of which for some reason are located before the pay station.What makes things all the better (or worse?) is that the restrooms are also before the pay station.Wait, didn't I say Foothill had a good customer experience?I never said it was perfect, and in terms of space utilization and transparency, it's completely terrible. However their shining grace is the fact that I can bus my food without having to separate utensils or toss food into compost. Yes, bussing is not optimal but I understand why it's somewhat necessary, and it's great that Foothill makes the process not all that terrible compared to other dining commons.Plus, their Late Night offerings are bomb.TIP: Late Night has different hours from Crossroads!

I think Foothill has the best food out of all of the UC Berkeley dining halls. This is my first semester living in Stern, which is an all girl dorm. Foothill dining is conveniently located on the first floor between Foothill resident hall and Stern resident hall. Dinner is typically served from 5-8pm and is a all-you-can-eat style of dining. The menu changes daily and it's posted on-line or in the dining hall so you can get an idea of what they will be serving in advance. Food is fresh and they usually have interesting menus....my favorite is the tri-tip with chimichurri sauce. They also serve a decently selection for vegetarians (usually you have to request though) For dinner, you can either pay with Cal meal points (8) or pay with cash or card for ($12). If you miss dinner, check out late night from 9pm to 1am! This is my favorite time to score some yummy food. From fries to chicken tenders, wings, breakfast items, cookies and milk, and my favorite the steak plate, etc.! If you purchase the "chews-to-reuse" container for 5 meal points or $5, you'll save a dollar each time instead of having to pay for a to-go box. Check it out, with Foothill dining... you can't go wrong!!

8.30lunch. It is at the foot of the hills. There were beef, clam chowder, pasta, noodles, burgers, fries, pizzas, seafood, rice, brownies, cherry pies, vegetables, cold meat, and many drinks. The view is nice from the windows. lunch11:00-14:00, dinner17:00-20:00.

Currently sitting in the FH dining room. It's definitely a different atmosphere compared to Cafe 3 and Crossroads. It has a woodsy cabin feel mainly because of the wood columns and high ceilings and minimal noise. It's not buffet style but a la carte, so plan on spending more money if you're a heavy eater. On average, I pay $12-$15 for a full dinner. I love the rice bowls here. They're just as good as Ramona's if not better (it's the sauce). Tonight's feature is the tofu & zucchini over rice! It's delicious. I miss the orange chicken, I haven't seen it since the first time I came here last semester. The burritos are pretty big for around $4. The super burrito with choice of meat, guacamole, sour cream, and all that good stuff is $6.50. There's cereal for cereal-lovers, granola, cakes, frozen yogurt, and ICEE. There's also a rotating menu of daily dry offerings for lunch and dinner. The junk food staples are also here. Salad for the conscious people. Dim sum is a hit or miss: sometimes hot and fresh, sometimes warm and crusty. Cub Market is adjacent to the food "court" and if you think the Odwalla selection is lacking in the cereal corner, go to Cub Market to find more selection and anything else you want to splurge on for your fabulous meal.

People love to hate on college dining hall food. Me, I don't think it's that bad. I ate at Foothill a lot last year and it was decent. Since they serve different things all the time, a critique of specific foods doesn't make much sense, so here's a collection of tips:- The menu is online at Cal Dining, so you can see what's being served before you get there.- Sundays are Sundae Sundays. If it's not Sunday, you can still get frozen yogurt from the sometimes-working yogurt machine.- The plates are really small, but it's a buffet so just go through a few times.- Don't go at peak hours unless you like standing in long lines. Example: getting there at 6:10 - bad. Getting there at 6:50 - the lines will be super short.- Monitor your meal point usage so you don't end up with too much or too little by the end of the semester.

I mean, this is a dorm after all!I got the grilled cheese plus a breakfast burrito. The grilled cheese was amazing. I highly recommend it. The burrito was EH.

Taste: 2Value: 1Service: 3I lived in Bowles three years ago, and I was forced to eat here many times. Let it suffice to say that the Foothill DC is the worst DC ever. I distinctly remember coming by for dinner one night and not being able to eat anything that they had. It was that disgusting.The only thing I enjoyed were the omelettes on the weekends (though there were huge lines) and the late night, with chicken strips and unlimited guacamole.

The only good thing is sometimes you get very nice and enthusiastic student workers. Otherwise the food is too salty, too oily, very often fried, and tastes weird. One time my friend tasted it and asked if Foothill even really has a kitchen. Not sure how much of their food is actually made here, a lot of things like the beef bulgogi (sometimes called taco beef or bbq beef depending on Foothill's mood) or orange chicken tastes like frozen reheated stuff.