Muslim, Jewish students create menu for US varsity eatery

SAN DIEGO: University of California (UC) San Diego students who want to keep a kosher or halal diet now have a place on campus to go, reports foreign media. 

Even better for night-owls, it’s also the first of any University of California diner open 24-hours a day.

The school’s OceanView Terrace in Thurgood Marshall College reopened after an extensive renovation Wednesday and was filled with students who came for free pizza, Mediterranean cuisine, salads and pastries.

Beginning in 2014, members of the Union of Jewish Students and the Muslim Student Association at UC San Diego began discussing the dining limitations they faced on campus. The end result is a menu fit for Jewish students who follow a kosher diet and Muslims who follow a halal diet. The two have many similarities but also a few differences, such as a restriction on any alcohol in halal food.

“It involves a lot of learning, a lot of training, and knowing what you can and cannot do,” said Leo Acosta, food services coordinator for UC San Diego’s Housing, Dining, Hospitality. “First, being kosher means all your ingredients are approved by the rabbi and certified kosher. There is no dairy in our restaurant. There’s got to be a controlled environment.”

“I can’t tell you enough how excited the Jewish community is,” he said. “Not just the Jewish students here, who are super excited, but the whole San Diego Jewish community at large is so excited this is here.

The dining area has three stations, including Spice, which servers a rotating kosher menu of Asian, Indonesian, Middle Eastern, North African, Cajun and other cuisines.

Third Kitchen serves pizzas that range from the Undergrad for $6, the 4.0 for $8.50 and the Full Ride for $10.50. Because no pork is used on any of the toppings — it’s not even allowed in the building — the pizzas are OK for people following kosher or halal diets.

Acosta said the restaurant is not halal certified, but is halal-friendly. The differences between the two can be slight, he said, noting that the pizza kitchen has fresh mozzarella, which isn’t halal.

“In the pizza station, we use halal proteins,” he said. “There’s beef pepperoni, halal chicken, halal chicken wings.” 

The third station, Counter Culture, serves espresso drinks, smoothies, acai bowls, pastries and gelato.

Besides the new menu, the building itself has been completely remodeled. As students walk inside, a stairway leading up to the displays a photo of Thurgood Marshall shaking hands with other lawyers celebrating their victory in the Supreme Court’s landmark desegregation ruling in 1954. 

“We’re trying to establish a story,” said Mark Cunningham, executive director of Housing and Design at UC San Diego.

As time goes on, new students at the school are further and further removed from its history, he said.

“They don’t know about Angela Davis,” he said about the scholar and civil rights activist who was a graduate student at the school in the 1960s. “They don’t know about those things, so we’re trying to re-establish that, but make it in a usable space.”