The Martlet

Over the years, many campus veterans have discovered little gems or special spots on campus. However, with school about to start back up, there’ll be a lot of new faces wandering amongst the rabbits. We could have let them blunder about aimlessly, peeing in dirty bathrooms and eating crappy food. But, that wouldn’t be very nice of us. Instead, The Martlet presents a guide to some of the best, and a few of the worst, places on campus.

Caffeinate yourself

Coffee is a staple in many students’ diets, and luckily coffee vendors are ubiquitous at UVic. But not all coffee is created equal.

The Best:

Munchie Bar, located in the Student Union Building (SUB), is known for having the best espresso on campus. Not only that, but Munchie Bar is also reasonably priced. If you bring your own mug, you save 25 cents on any hot beverage or get a $1 coffee. Munchie Bar serves Kicking Horse coffee and is often less busy than UVic-owned coffee outlets because you have to – gasp – go outside the Ring to get there.

Munchie Bar Manager Lisa Sheppard says the Munchie Bar strives to offer higher end coffee at a student-friendly price.

“We’ve been doing a lot of barista training to make sure, especially for September, that the coffee’s really great,” she said. “We got quite an expensive fancy grinder ... it doesn’t get too hot so it doesn’t burn the bean, so apparently it even makes the coffee taste better.”

Another important element of Munchie Bar is the atmosphere, which includes fun, friendly service.

“The thing I try and do is get the staff to serve really quickly... students always need to get their coffee and get to class,” Sheppard explained. “Our staff are usually personable; they play good music.”

The Worst:

Bibliocafe, located in the McPherson Library, is the worst place on campus to get your buzz on. Not just because it is stupidly busy all of the time, but also because their coffee just isn’t worth the wait. Sure, it’s conveniently located, but you’ll spend longer waiting in line than you would taking the jaunt across to the SUB. And, if you make the trek, you won’t end up with the tepid, tasteless sludge you’ll find at Bibliocafe.

Eating lunch

Sometimes you hit the snooze button one too many times before your 8:30 class, and don’t have time to pack a lunch for a long day on campus. Luckily, UVic has a myriad of food options for your convinence.

The Best:

Grad House, located beside the SUB and run by UVic’s Graduate Students’ Society (GSS), serves up the best lunch on campus. It has a sit-down service with a variety of tasty selections. Best of all, the restaurant is open to everyone, not just grad students. GSS Food and Beverage Manager Alan King-Jones says that part of what makes Grad House unique is their local purchasing.

“We try to use as much local stuff as we can especially when it’s in season,” King-Jones said. “Most of my produce is local; my chicken’s local–things like that.”

The Grad House also has all local beers on tap, and is introducing a new wine selection for the fall, which will include Vancouver Island and other B.C. wines. King-Jones also said Grad House prepares almost everything, from salad dressings to meat, in house.

“We make pretty much everything from scratch; all our dressings are homemade, all our burgers, most of our recipes and such, there’s very few things that we bring in that are frozen products,” he said. “We do all of our own smoking in house. For our chicken club we marinate and smoke our chicken and then even our bacon we rub with cayenne and brown sugar so everything on it is a little bit different. It’s not processed meat or anything. We use no processed meat here whatsoever.”

Granted, this makes the prices a little higher than other places on campus, but it’s still reasonable.

“I think people really appreciate it,” King-Jones said. “It’s especially true with trying to keep the price point at the $10 and under range. I think that goes a long way to our success.”

If local food at reasonable prices isn’t enough to sell you on Grad House, there’s one indisputable reason to try this place out–the $6 Burger Beer special, which includes a burger, fries, and a pint of whatever beer is on special that day.

“We started it on Mondays because that was sort of our slowest evening… It’s very popular,” King-Jones said. The only downside is the service can be slow, especially during lunch rush, so don’t hit up Grad House if you’re short on time.

The Worst:

Unfortunately for all those poor residence kids, the Cadboro Commons Cafeteria serves up the worst food on campus. The pasta is tasteless, the meat often unidentifiable without the accompanying sign. And, whatever you do, don’t eat the cannelloni. Sure, it’s cheap, but even the most indiscriminate eaters will notice the lack of quality. If you must eat at the Cadboro Commons Cafeteria, stick with the grill or the salad bar, unless they’re serving the perogies, which are exceptionally good.

Hitting the books

Everyone needs that special study place on campus. Sure, the library is an old standby, but that’s so cliché, not to mention incredibly busy during finals season. There are lots of other places to hit the books outside of the traditional setting.

The Best:

We’re loathe to reveal our secret study place, but it really is one of the best places to study on campus. It’s the SUB upper lounge, located across the hall from the Michele Pujol room. It’s quiet, has lots of electrical outlets, and comfy armchairs and couches. Frequently, you’ll find a worn-out student napping. Just cross your fingers that nobody starts playing the piano.

The Worst:

There are many terrible places to study on campus, like in your dorm room while the rest of your friends are doing a centurion, or outside on a blustery day. Just use your judgement, stick to places like the library or an empty classroom (Clearihue has lots), and you should be able to avoid any potentially grade-deducting distractions.

Taking care of business

When nature calls, even the busiest student has to answer. Not all washrooms were created equal, however. Luckily, we’re here to reveal where to do your business in a private, clean, and relatively comfortable manner.

The Best:

There’s a two-way tie for the best washroom on campus. First, we have the single-roomed washroom on the SUB’s elusive third-floor. It’s clean, private, and in the words of a former Martlet staffer, a great place to take a “comfortable dump.” However, it is a little bit out of the way. If you need a more convenient place to relieve yourself, the washrooms in the new Social Sciences and Mathematics building are a great place to pee. They’re clean, have lots of stalls, and the lights turn on when you walk in, which is pretty nifty.

The Worst:

The washrooms on the first floor of Clearihue get a lot of traffic, which means they are way down the ladder on places to pee. They’re tiny to the point of cramped, with three stalls that fill up quickly, resulting in line-ups between classes. These washrooms are also dirty, with suspicious-looking liquids often lurking on the dingy linoleum floor. Trust us, it’s worth the walk to SSM or the SUB if you have the time.

Printing your homework

Don’t have a printer at home? Rushing to complete that essay in-between classes? Chances are at some point you will need to print something on campus. A friendly suggestion: keep a print card in your wallet for such an emergency, as most of them require a $1 deposit to get a new card.

The Best:

ZAP Copy in the SUB does black and white printing and photocopying at five cents a page. This is less than half the price of any of UVic’s print stations. ZAP can also do other fun stuff, like print banners, mugs and calendars. Their colour printer is a bit slow (read: sloth), so if you need to do colour printing I’d suggest hitting up Clearihue or paying a bit extra to have the ZAP staff do it for you.

The Worst:

ZAP may be the best because it’s the cheapest, but it’s also the worst. At peak hours, you can experience incredible wait times due to busy computers or your two-page assignment getting stuck behind someone else’s 100-page thesis. While UVic printers may seem like a rip-off, if you’re in a rush you’re probably better off printing at the library or the Clearihue lab.

Quenching your thirst

Many students enjoy the occasional drink or seven. While downtown Victoria offers a mediocre bar scene, the thirsty student doesn’t even need to leave campus to get their drank on.

The Best:

Felicita’s, the campus pub in the SUB, has cheap, cheap beer. The beer on tap runs from $3.50 to $4, and there’s always a daily special. Most of the brews are decent, and most of them are local. They also change with the season. If you’re not into beer, don’t worry. Other specials range from $3.50 Long Island Iced Teas to highballs. And, here’s an extra tip: it’s actually cheaper to buy your beer in sleeves rather than jugs when it’s on special.

The Worst:

This one may seem like a no-brainer, but the worst place to drink is outside, in public. More than one inebriated first-year living in residence has been handed a double whammy for this offence: one fine for drinking in public, followed by a second fine for underage drinking. And the drunk tank really isn’t the best place to end your night. It may be tempting, especially considering the space restrictions inside dorm rooms, but just don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

Grabbing breakfast

You woke up late. You had to run to catch your bus with your jacket half on and your shoes untied. You made your early class. Congrats! But now class is done, you’re stuck on campus until 3, and your stomach is complaining about its lack of breakfast.

The Best:

There is no one best place to get breakfast, because it really depends on your mood. However, there are three very different breakfast items available on campus that deserve mention as the best. The first is Breakfast in a Cup, available at the Health Food Bar in the SUB. Breakfast in a Cup consists of your choice of two fruits, yogurt, and granola, all layered parfait-style. It’s delicious and semi-nutritious. However, at $4.85 it’s a little pricey. Another “best” in the SUB are the bagels at Bean There. They have a couple of different kinds, including everything and multi-grain. But what makes these bagels a “best” is that you can get them toasted with feta cream cheese for $2.50. If you want full on eggs, toast, bacon and hash browns, however, University Centre is the only place to go. In the mornings, they convert the grill into a breakfast-making machine, and your morning meal standards are all available there at incredibly reasonable prices.

The Worst:

Once again, the Cadboro Commons Cafeteria is serving up sub-par food. If you don’t have to eat there, don’t do it. The scrambled eggs are your typical bulk breakfast food mush, which is the price you often have to pay for large-scale breakfast service. If you do have to eat at the residence cafeteria, stick to hardboiled eggs or cereal.