Last Wednesday night I was sitting in the Clarion office, working on the entertainment section, when my stomach started speaking to me in not-so-polite terms. It was empty, and it needed a solution for that problem: food.

The Pub was my only option. I didn’t have my car parked at the Driscoll Center, and ordering Chinese food seemed a bit much, especially considering the location of our little enclave we call the student media office (it’s a little hard to find for a delivery boy). So I scraped together the $6 I had in my wallet and approached the restaurant counter.

I work at a restaurant that serves the most amazing steak fajita salad that used to come in a taco shell, but doesn’t anymore. So when I saw a similar item on the menu, my mouth watered at the prospect of a crispy shell with crisp lettuce and juicy meat. I salivated at the thought of tomatoes and sour cream and all things fajita-like. After waiting about 15 minutes, I clutched the bursting to-go box as I moseyed on back to the office.

I opened the box. I dropped my jaw. The “beef” was ground beef, which would have been tasty, given a little fajita seasoning of some sort, but it came in the form of a chopped-up hamburger patty. The hamburger had been cooked whole, and then cut up into chunks and carelessly thrown into the edible bowl. The shell itself disappointed me too, not to mention sour cream that was nearing cottage-cheese stage.

I remember my freshman year, when we rarely ate at the Pub. We changed the word to resemble something as untasteful as the stomach-grumbling dishes. Last year I remember an improvement, but this year the food seems to have digressed.

And the service? Perhaps I am overcritical, being a server myself, or perhaps it is the fact that students don’t tip (why should they at a restaurant that is more cafeteria than gourmet?), but the under-trained wait staff doesn’t seem all too excited to be there.

I could go on and on, but the fact is this: the Pub is not the social hub that it could be. If the food improved, the service improved, and prices were lower, maybe us kids in the older crowd would want to stop in for a burger. Just don’t put it in my salad!

Jenn Mueller

Clarion OnStage Editor