If you’re trying to eat remotely healthy good luck. Same food every day and the “healthier” options are the lowest quality meats I’ve ever had and just as greasy as the pizza. I found a chicken vertebrae in my chicken a week ago. If I have to eat chicken shawarma another day I might just give up on trying to eat. Nearly everyday the rice tastes sour also. Fortunately the athletes get lobster though.
The only reason I go here is to use the swipes that UA requires you to buy in your first year ?
Mostly Garbage besides a few things, half the time the food is so bland idk what i am eating. Stay away from any tacos or burgers they serve. Only the pizza and desert station are decent
Great food and good for eating at night and on weekends when other diddling halls are not open.
Overall pretty average but the pizza and ice cream is great
Went for Parents day weekend, nice to know the money we pay for out kids to attend UA is well spent.
An outstanding place to eat for you and your family.
Usually the dining hall on campus, the pizza especially is good. This being said, options are usually limited and very repetitive, dinning area is always dirty, and drink machines are often out of order. Also they dont have straws. Gotta love University dining!
Edit: up to 3 stars for improvement since the start of this year. The below comments still apply depending on the day though.This is my third year on campus, and my third year eating at lakeside. Prospective students: do not be fooled! The only time this place is even halfway decent is when there are bama bound/other college visits going on. The rest of the year it's a complete mess.The management keeps the place at about 50% of the staff that they actually need to keep it running. So, tables are perpetually nasty, the back patio is almost never open, lines for pizza can take 20+ minutes (pizza is often the only option available), the mobile order option works less than half the time, there are almost no good options left after an hour before close, the transition between meals takes 45 minutes or more leaving nearly no options, finding a seat is difficult even when not busy because they often close off sections early, staff is far too overworked to be friendly (with a few exceptions), it's often impossible to find a fork, on multiple occasions I have ended up with apparent food poisoning, the hospital cafeteria style burgers are usually extremely overcooked with no toppings available, they took away the non-dairy milk options, the floors are often sticky, soda machines are down all the time, the Starbucks machine--while great in theory--is not stocked enough to be useful, less than half of the windows to serve from are usually open, the vegetarian/plant based options sit out all day and end up not being eatable, the trash cans are always overflowing, the lighting is so dark it's depressing, the music is too quiet to hear it or too loud to tolerate, the bathrooms are the dirtiest on campus, and I could go on.Two stars instead of one because of the workers who actually try and are friendly, the surprisingly good pizza (the bar is low), and the halfway decent salad bar.Go to fresh foods or Sola instead where the management seems to have a clue what they are doing. Or better yet, get off the meal plan.
Update, Sept. 3, 2021: I have learned that cartons of almond milk are available upon request at the salad bar. I cannot say whether this was the case when I wrote the review. Also, the omelette cheese is of a decidedly low quality, but on second thought its liquid consistency suggests a provenance other than Kraft singles. Finally, closer examination has revealed to me that the eggs are not in fact perfectly circular: Whether this be a strength or a defect is left for the reader to determine.Where shall I begin?At 7 a.m. on a typical weekday, perhaps, when Lakeside’s doors open, and bleary-eyed students start to trickle in. First come the ROTC cadets, with their crew cuts and ponytails, black neck gaiters, and Army-branded gym clothes. Then follow the poor backpack-lugging souls fueling up for 8 a.m. lectures. Conceivably others with less punishing schedules patronize the dining hall throughout the rest of the morning; then again, maybe not: after all, why would anyone choose Lakeside over the slightly more remote Fresh Food Company for the most important meal of the day, except to conserve precious minutes of sleep before an early morning class?For it is at breakfast that Lakeside Dining falls to its nadir. The hot breakfast features a rotating cast of typical American fare: eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, hash browns, home fries, pancakes, waffles. There is none of the intrepid culinary experimentation sometimes on display later in the day, which is fine. The problem lies in the execution.First, the eggs, which are either fried or served as omelettes. The fried eggs come in perfectly circular disks, a testament to the steel molds into which they were so lovingly cracked. They are cooked until the yolk (always broken) is powdery and the white wrinkly, yet by the time they arrive on your plate they have almost invariably equilibrated to room temperature. The omelettes are subjected to a similarly generous cook time, perhaps to ensure that the Kraft single tucked inside is thoroughly melted.The sausage links, with their loose, peeling skin, taste better than they look. The bacon, on the other hand, is frequently less crispy than stretchy, like fruit leather.Credit where credit is due: the carbohydrates--the biscuits, potatoes, and pancakes--are generally tolerable. Even the waffles, which appear to be toaster waffles cooked French toast-style, aren’t half bad. I’ve heard the grits are of the store-bought instant variety; all I can say is that the one time I tried them, they tasted like the cardboard container in which they were served.A couple of times I’ve discovered flourishing colonies of white, fuzzy mold in my blackberries, but otherwise I’ve found little fault in Lakeside’s fresh fruit offerings, which are decently varied and available throughout the day.The coffee comes from a big, countertop Starbucks machine with a touchscreen whose prompt--What sounds good today?--may be the most earnest expression of solicitude you’ll encounter at Lakeside. It’s actually pretty good (it’s Starbucks, after all), although if you prefer to take your coffee with any kind of non-dairy milk, you’ll have to B.Y.O.M. (I seem to remember a Silk almond milk dispenser gracing the counter when I visited the University in 2019 for a summer program. I, for one, would not complain if Bama Dining elected to bring it back.) For some inscrutable reason, the staff of Lakeside seem to prefer cleaning the coffee machine in the morning, after the dining hall opens. (A word of caution: if you see an older white gentleman in a baseball cap cleaning the machine, do not ask him how long it will take. He will get snippy with you and you will be forced to hold back tears during your 8 a.m. calc class. Not that I speak from experience.)Apparently there is a character limit for Google reviews, so an evaluation of Lakeside's lunch and dinner offerings will have to await further installments.