The Bamboo Café, which offers a variety of Asian foods, opened in the Mattin Center on Oct. 1, taking the place of the Silk Road Café.
“Hopkins Dining made a decision to replace Silk Road Café with a new and fresh take on Asian cuisines,” Bill Connor, director of dining services, wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “The majority of student feedback over the course of the last year was that our new dining contractor, Bon Appétit, provided great food, and we wanted to continue this level of student satisfaction at the Mattin Center.”
Bamboo Café’s meal options include miso soup, pho (noodle soup), bao (steamed buns), banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) and Hissho Sushi, the same brand found at One Bowl in Levering and the Charles Street Market. They also carry bubble tea and smoothies.
“The food is okay, but it’s still campus food,” senior Norah Oles said. “At least it’s better than Silk Road. My friend got food poisoning there.”
Other students said they felt the café’s offerings were too limited.
“The beef banh mi and bubble tea were good, but there [were] not a lot of menu options,” freshman Monica Zewdie said. “It was basically the same as [One Bowl at] Levering.”
Although some of the café’s offerings can be found at other campus eateries, Bamboo Café is the only place to buy pho, banh mi and bao.
“The flavors were different from One Bowl. If I want a hearty soup, I am going here,” graduate student Tarek Tutunji said. “The pho is good, spicy too. I guess I would recommend it.”
High prices was another general complaint among patrons.
“It was overpriced, like everything on campus,” Oles said. “I paid like ten bucks for pork bao and a seaweed salad.”
One major difference between Bamboo Café and Silk Road is that Bamboo accepts dining dollars because it is owned by campus dining provider Bon Appétit.
“By offering Bon Appétit the opportunity to open Bamboo Café, we essentially were able to achieve a twofold objective: offer students great-tasting food and increase locations that accept dining dollars,” Connor wrote.
Bon Appétit’s decision to open another Asian eatery on campus was due in large part to the success of One Bowl, which offers noodle and rice bowls.
“The popularity of One Bowl... did inspire us to create a new destination that could provide additional pan-Asian-inspired items,” Ty Paup, Bon Appétit’s general manager, wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Our offerings at One Bowl are consistently our most popular amongst the Hopkins community.”
There were also some logistical reasons to open another Asian eatery.
“The opportunity to move our sushi production from Levering was a welcome one, doubling both the customer service area and the kitchen area and hopefully enhanc[ing] the customer experience at One Bowl, which is very popular,” Paup wrote.
Bon Appétit designed the café to be conducive to studying and socializing.
“Hopkins Dining and Bon Appétit wanted to enliven the space... with new indoor seating options that can be moved around,” Connors said.
Silk Road did not renegotiate its contract with Hopkins after last year.
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