Aidan Millerick ’29
Spoiler Alert: It Isn’t Croads
College is a big change for incoming freshmen, as many are forced for the first time to fend for themselves, without caretakers to do their laundry, drive them places, brush their teeth, and most importantly… feed them. Thankfully, the campus meal plan provides. They can eat at Kimball and power through the resulting abdominal pain and worryingly watery poo, or they can waste precious dining dollars at Crossroads and Cool Beans, where the marginally better food is offset by the outlandish wait times. Faced with these dining conditions, many freshmen succumb to despair; holing up in their dorms and surviving off of instant noodles and goldfish crackers. But wait! There is a better way.
Right under the noses of most of the Freshmen, deep in the bowels of the madhouse that is Brooks Hall, lies the hidden gem of campus dining, a restaurant that blows Kimball and its subsidiaries out of the water. I am talking, of course, about the Brooks Common Room kitchen between the hours of 11pm and 3am. With a rotating menu of Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, and German cuisine, prepared lovingly by the best foreign exchange students Holy Cross has to offer, there truly is something for everyone in the Brooks Common Room kitchen.
Although dining dollars are not accepted there (I’ve tried — nothing to swipe), food in the Brooks Common Room kitchen is usually free as the foreign exchange students are all pretty nice people. However if they’re Dutch they will give you a Tikkie so you can pay them later, so maybe don’t come in when they’re around (Though the Dutch do make great french fries). Personally, I like it best when the Spanish staff is working, because I took Spanish as a freshman in high school and can make small talk in their native language. They even have a cute nickname for me, “Pendejo”, because I’m their favorite customer.
All in all, this reporter gives the Brooks Common Room kitchen 9 Guy Fieri’s out of 10, and urges any students disillusioned with the Holy Cross meal plan to check it out.
Featured image courtesy of Holy Cross Magazine
Copy Edited by Annamaria DeCamp ’27
Leave a Reply