This fine? It really aight. Dope food I guess. Soup good. Dogs good. Where ma hoes at??? read more

Sharples Dining Hall - World renowned hash browns and sausages. Come one, come all! - Diners Near Me - Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

Idk what the others reviewers are talking about. This place is nowhere near 5 stars. Sharples is what you might call "a last resort." The following conversation is common all across the Swarthmore campus: "Hey wanna go to dinner?" "Where? Sharples? What is it tonight?" "Pasta bar and dry chicken." "Ew, again? That's the fourth time this week. Want to go to bamboo, the place with average asian food but literally the only restaurant in a five mile radius?" "No, I can't. I ran out of points on the low-points plan that swarthmore forces its freshman to be on." "Aw, shit. Guess we have to go to sharples then." "Hey, it's not too bad. There's meatballs." "Oh, nice. I'm mildly not as disappointed." If it's not dealing with the absurdly crowded cafeteria during the lunch hour and waiting literally twenty minutes for mediocre food, then it's dealing with the angry ice cream lady that constantly screams at you for no reason. (Like, what's up with that? Seriously. She yelled at me for trying to put ice cream on a waffle.) The pizza is mediocre. The jambalaya is completely bland. The grill is okay but always busy during bad food days. During actual good food days, like fish tacos, my god, good luck getting food. For some reason, they sequester everyone into one fucking line. I've seen the line stretch like thirty feet beyond where you get trays. Furthermore, the line moves slow, so you could be standing there waiting for actually half an hour. Don't even mention the "pho" bar. My god, I don't think I've ever seen a dish butchered that badly. The broth is BITTER. BITTER! Why is it bitter??? One more point: the tables are... sticky? I don't know how else to describe it. The table surfaces are weirdly sticky and not smooth. It's as if they don't clean the tables every day and just let everything dry out and condense, forming a thin sticky defensive layer for the table. Swarthmore efficiency and design thinking at its finest. In conclusion, it's kinda mediocre but sometimes it manages to reach average. read more

I am not totally against Sharples food. They are pretty delicious sometimes. The problem is the people behind the counter. Once I went there, I got so excited because they had wing bar- the best bar you will ever see. There are three people. One holding the tongs, second just standing there, third bringing food from the kitchen. Since there were tongs in two other chicken trays, I grabbed them by myself and the first one said "she only asked for zing wing." Well, my point is if you don't want customers to get the food by themselves, why would you put tongs there! It's not like you get one out of three. Well, that makes me disappointed. Sharples can be a resort for outside customers but they treat the students like shit. Especially the student part-time workers. They should be trained. read more

You can't beat dining in a ski lodge with all you can eat deliciousness and ice cream all day! Locals call it "Le Sharples" for its high class environment. The long lines during meal hours tells it all! People simply cannot wait to get their hands on the food here. Giant flat screen TV is a plus. Wok station will allow you to even make your own food if you are not satisfied with the offering (impossible)! Come every Wednesday and Sunday night and you will be in for a treat! read more

Quality is superb. Woohoo! As good as it gets! read more

Sharples Dining Hall - the front of the building - Diners Near Me - Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

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I love Sharples so much I have made a food instagram dedicated to the best "bar" offered-- pasta bar. The creamy pesto sauce is so good I blackout and when I come to I have eaten three huge plates of it. Truly addictive. read more

This tree-lined oasis of academia is known for boasting the highest number of neckbeards per capita among its student body, and for a student body that is regularly ranked #1 on US News & World Report's list of "students who are most likely to snort obnoxiously when asked who they are rooting for in the upcoming Super Bowl". In general, this school is best known for not being well known. As a result, very few outside of Swarthmore's campus is its fantastic cuisine. Sharples (pronounced: shahrp-pools), the campus's only cafeteria, offers an unique fusion of some of the world's most disparate cuisines, oftentimes blending tastes in exhilaratingly new ways. Not only that, but a large vegan option as well as a decent selection of gluten-free products make this dining experience difficult to forget. The ski-lodge shaped architecture creates an inviting atmosphere in which patrons sit side-by-side along meadhall-style tables. When this writer-gastronomist entered, the dinner crowd had already begun to fill the building, as it closes at 6:30 every Sunday. I found myself a quiet corner, set my jacket down, and made my way to the food lines. Patrons must wait in long, winding lines before they may reach one of many food bars, which create a nostalgic feel for public middle school lunch lines (or a prison complex, if you have ever had the pleasure). Once I reached the end of the line, I had a choice of two pastas and three sauces. I decided to select - at my discretion! - the whole wheat penne pasta, the tomato meat sauce, the alfredo sauce, and a splash of pesto. I grabbed two crunchy slices of garlic bread, grabbed an antipasto of spinach and humus, and made my way back to my seat. Patrons serve their own drinks at high-tech dispensary stations lined across the wall, just the one of many ways Sharples shows off its technological wizardry. This adventurer-poet chose one of the cafeteria's most exotic options, the sugar free Perfect X. I believe this drink's mystical name alludes to its origins as a favored beverage/stimulant for ravers, who made this concoction as a way to replenish themselves while absorbing large amounts of party drugs. This explains the neon color and tart taste. When I sat down, I began with the antipasto, impressed with its laconic presentation and earthy texture. The humus, which appears to have been made by placing large amounts of chickpeas into an industrial pulverizer until it gained the consistency of food designed for early-stage infant, adds an organic charm to the spinach's understated leafiness. I was surprised by its textural complexity, and found it a light yet appropriate appetizer. Don't let its visual simplicity fool you. Its textual complexity will scream at you with every bite. Once I finished with my salad, I moved onto the main course. Sharples, well known for its twice weekly "pasta bar," remains a favorite among its students. Curious to see what the entire hubbub was about, I was excited to dive into this meal. The three sauces, appearing like the tripartite flag of its native Italy, would scare many weaker-minded foodies away. But not this learned traveler - I consumed this meal with the zeal of a predator sinking its fangs into its bovine prey. And friends, I was well-rewarded. Despite what you may think, the sauces provide for a subtle, layered eating experience akin to listening to a Tchaikovsky piece or watching a Nicolas Cage film. The contrasting flavors, rather than competing with each other, play off each other in a cacophony of culinary pleasure. It was as if the flavors danced on my tongue with the delicateness of a Muscovite ballet company performing Swan Lake. To say the least, this dish had attitude. After spending a few minutes meditating on my experience with a Nirvana-like sense of ease, I then turned to the final course of the evening. Tonight's dessert was a chocolate chip cheesecake with an Oreo crust. The mere site of this delectable pastry would make the most hardened former chocoholics suffer from a return of physiological cravings. Indeed, one bite into this mad scientist creation, and I was like August Gloop, falling head first into Willy Wonka's magical chocolate river. Less cheesecake than chocolate bar in pie form, less food item than one way ticket to a Shangri-La - this dessert should probably be made illegal for the very same reasons that highly addictive substances such as heroin and cocaine are illegal. God forbid that I will ever be executed before a court of my peers, but in the near-zero chance that would happen, then I would most certainly request that my last meal would be a whole tin of this pie. Overall, I would describe the Sharples "pasta night" the foodie experience of a lifetime. This writer is surprised that less people know about this magical cafeteria and haven't made it into a culinary mecca. With that said, I am happy that this place remains a modest profile, as it adds to its casual character. read more