The Indiana Memorial Union announced four new restaurants will open Monday. The restaurants will provide students with dining options, including pizza, buffets and Asian fusion.
The Mix, one of the four restaurants, is a buffet-style hot bar and salad bar, and it will offer online-only ordering through Grubhub. The other new restaurants will be the Lantern, an Asian fusion restaurant incorporating dishes from Thailand, India and other countries; Quarry Pie Co., a Napolese pizza restaurant that also serves pasta and salad, and Whitfield Grill, a restaurant serving burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches and other products.
The opening of these restaurants is a part of the IMU renovation project, which began in January 2020 and closed off large portions of the IMU dining facilities.
The Globe, another IMU dining option, reopened Monday. The Globe offers food from various Bloomington local restaurants on a rotating basis, including Taste of India, Amrit, Dat’s and BTown Gyros.
IMU executive director Hank Walter said students were responsible for some of the restaurant concepts. In summer 2018, student members of the Dining Renovation Advisory Committee went on a field trip to DePaul and went to the Beatrix Market, a combination market and restaurant that also served buffets. This field trip inspired the Mix, Walter said.
Walter said that the food court layout that was introduced in the ‘90s encouraged students to order their food and leave once they were finished. With the new restaurants and more comfortable layout, he said he hopes the dining areas will be more student-friendly.
“We hope that students will use the space all day long and into the evening, for group meetings or whatever, kind of like a coffeehouse,” Walter said. “We also hope that, once the pandemic is behind us, students might do other kinds of informal gatherings there.”
Each of the restaurants will offer online ordering through Grubhub, while the Lantern and Quarry Pizza Co. will also offer in-person carryout.
