“Take a chance on me” – ABBA
MAKE YOUR OWN SANDWICH
Making your first DIY sandwich at Hackett café is an intimidating experience. People are impatiently queuing behind you, you’re unsure what to do with your tray, and it is difficult to believe that they’re being serious with the unlimited avocado. Soldier on though, because the make-your-own sandwich counter is one of only two or three aspects of uni life that won’t disappoint. Take a moment to appreciate the pleasing minutiae. Yup, that is a whole tub of crumbed chicken. That’s right, you can choose as many sauces as you want. Hell yeah, they’ve got beetroot. Right on, there are like six types of bread roll. Long live the make your own.
MACARONS
Whose idea was it to stock French macarons at Guild Café? Macarons, the hype-food of 2012 that launched a thousand Instagram accounts, could not look more out of place here than if they were on the countertop of a truckstop diner, next to a jumbo sized carton of Farmer’s Union iced coffee. While I applaud whoever’s efforts to bring continental European culture to Crawley, when faced with a sad wilting guild macaron I am obliged to ask pourquoi?
$4.50 NOODLES
$4.50 noodles are the reason I pause every now and then to thank the powers that be for the fact guild village isn’t a sea of Aroma Cafes and Jamaica Blues. With all due credit to these fine establishments, nobody but the mysterious Guild Catering Overlord could come up with anything as satisfyingly disgusting as the $4.50 guild noodles, whose slimy ambiguity (what are the crunchy bits?) has nursed a thousand hangovers without breaking a youth allowance budget.
STEAMED BUNS
You’d be forgiven for avoiding what are possibly the least appetizing culinary creations in the southern hemisphere – foetus-like soft grey balls of mysterious doughy origin, languishing sweatily next to the salad bar. I assume that the guild steamed buns are someone’s idea of a joke, or a weak cough in the direction of cultural homogenization. Nonetheless, if you’re low on coins and resolve, let a cheap and oddly delicious steamed bun steer you through a midday episode of assignment panic.
MRS MAC NORMCORE CRED
Guild cafés offer a delicate and varied selection of Mrs Mac’s pies and pastries. You may at first blanche at the prospect of hogging around campus, sausage roll in hand, tomato sauce streaking your cheek, but the more fashion-conscious students around you will recognize immediately that you are trailblazing the new Tradie Chic trend. Meanwhile, you’ll be saving money – a Mrs Macs snack won’t set you back more than $4.
Words by Kat Gillespie