Foco Woes

Only at Foco does the most important meal of the day suddenly become the least.

I’ll admit, I haven’t been the biggest breakfast person this term.  With my earliest class at 12:30, I tend to sleep through it and dream of Special K Red Berries with added fresh fruit, Quaker Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal with even more apples sliced in, homemade pancakes, and my dad’s heavenly breakfast sandwiches.

Browsing the FoCo menu one day because I had to tutor Econ at 11 and wanted to eat something besides a KAF pastry before the gym and my 2A, I saw Apple Oatmeal Pancakes at Ma Thayer’s under Thursday’s breakfast menu.  I decided to stop being nocturnal, wake up earlier, and do the whole breakfast thing so I could try those pancakes. And put apples and caramel on top. I’m a visionary like that.

So I walk into Foco at 10:30 AM, a solid half hour before the “lunch” meal swipe begins, and there’s rice and chicken stir-fry and beef, but no pancakes.  Apparently 10:30 AM is even too late for eggs.  So, basically, going into FoCo with a breakfast meal swipe can’t even get you breakfast.

Okay, so I put together intensely delicious bowl of oatmeal with raisins and banana and cinnamon, but it’s the principle of FoCo not following its own policies that  really gets me. A restaurant wouldn’t dare stop offering its lunch menu before the designated time just so they could prepare for dinner.  It’s simply juvenile, and not what I would expect of an Ivy League institution’s dining hall.  However, I wasn’t even that surprised because it was FoCo. FoCo is the big stupid dog with a big heart and no brains that you can’t simply neglect, but you kind of secretly wish it’ll run into a car so you can have something more intelligent that can actually play catch without hurting itself.

Honestly, how hard is it to leave some eggs and pancakes out while you make up some chicken dish?  I would have gladly made some for myself, and they’d taste better, too.  Frying pancakes and scrambling eggs are probably the two easiest and least time-consuming things in the book; you’d think there would be no problem churning out your basic breakfast foods.  Everyone knows how much it turns a person’s tastebuds off to be presented with lunch options when you’re expecting breakfast flavors.  And doesn’t Dr. Kim know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?  If I’m going to use use one of my swipes in the breakfast period, is it too much to ask for some breakfast?

—Meghan Hassett