The family mensa in Università Cattolica
Where to eat when you need family time far from home: immersing yourself in the Mensa&Pizza.9 in Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milano
Varvara Kotova, Emma Trainson, Louise Lecomte
For our new school project in Digital Journalism and Digital media in Italy, we chose to focus on the food offered by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. The University has several mensas (canteens) where students and employees can eat every day, from monday to friday, and on the weekends for some of them.
In total, there are four mensas in the university, located in different places, and offering different types of meals (breakfast, lunch, diner). However, each canteen has its own opening hours. Mensa&Pizza.9, located at a five-minute walk from the main campus (Via Ludovicco Necchi, 9), opens its doors from monday to saturday, for lunch (12pm-2pm), and for diner (7pm-8:30pm). Many students, or employees, go there every day, or to other mensas such as Mensa.18 (Via San Vittore, 18), Mensa.5 (Via Ludovicco Necchi, 5) or Residenza Buonarroti (piazza M. Buonarroti 30), to have their meal. When the Mensa&Pizza.9 is not serving meals, it is opened for students who wants to come study in a quiet environment. The Mensa&Pizza.9 also have a third utility, as it receives some students that follow the cooking lab course of the Università Cattolica, part of the international curriculum, on some evenings of the week.
Prices are fairly affordable, ranging from €4.5 to €6.65, with a choice of pizza or various types of meal such as pasta, vegetables or meat. The plates are served accordingly to the season, and some ingredients are coming from organic agriculture. It is really important to serve this kind of meal to students who are looking to eat well and for a reasonable price. In terms of environment and functioning, the campus mensas look like traditional campus canteens.
Each of them has the menu written at the entrance, so that people can make their choice. Then they follow the queue, the system is functioning like a self service, for some plates (desert, beverages…) and there is also the kitchen staff that is serving the main courses (first and sometimes second one). Once people have chosen their menu, they go and sit on tables alone or with their friends. The mensa time really is to either carry on studies, or on the other way, to relax in the middle of the day. At the end of their meals, people put their tray on a treadmill in order to ensure that the dishes are properly cleaned by employees of the mensas. To pay for their menu, students are expected to recharge their university card, called ateneo+ at one of the external terminal that is specifically made for this. Thanks to this system, the queue in the mensa is reduced, because the students and staff members that come to eat just have to pass their card on a machine to pay.
To see if the opinions of the mensas were great, we checked some reviews posted on Google. The canteens have been noted on Google, and the Pizza&mensa 9, receive the grade of 4,2 stars, which is a really high grade for a canteen. Some customers left interesting opinions, with different grades. What was generally coming out of those comment are that the level offered by the Mensa is very high for a university cafeteria. It is explained that the variety of products offered, like the full meal and/or the pizza are affordable, even if one’s budget is quite low (at least lower than in any other place were you can eat around the University). The fact that water and sodas drinks are at free disposable is also enjoyable for customers. The only bad point that could be list was that sometimes the personal could be rude.
By visiting the different mensas, we had the chance to interview two women : Lidia Crafa and Giusy Liberio, who both have been working at the mensas for 37 years and 25 years. Overall, the work has not changed over the past years but the cleaning conditions and service have considerably changed as everything has become much more technologically advanced. Each day, around 1 200 students eat in Mensa&Pizza9 (Via Ludovicco Necchi, 9). Most of the time, they take the “complete meal” (2 courses) formula or the pizza one, which is also very popular. We asked them if they had any anecdotes or good memories to share, and they happily declared : “Every day at work is a holiday for us. We are a big family. We are happy for each other. Sometimes someone comes here throughout their pregnancy just to talk to us, not to work.”. According to them, the best part of their job is, by far, the communication with students every day, and recognising familiar faces. Throughout the interview, these lovely women were friendly and joked with us, which made this moment a very charming time. It is great luck that such wonderful people work in our cafeteria.
You may wonder why is it better to eat in the university’s canteen rather than a cafe ? Here are the main reasons why eating in the university’s canteen might be advantageous for us as students : our canteen has more affordable meal options compared to cafes. Indeed, the mensas are almost 50% cheaper then cafes since you can have several courses for 7€ maximum, whereas in cafes 7€ is the price for a slice of a quiche or a sandwich. Then, it prioritizes offering a variety of healthy meal choices to cater to the needs of students and faculty, and it has nutritionally balanced menus, which can be beneficial for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
We will end this review by adding the fact that, as international students, we were not that familiar with the way things worked, and now we spend at least one day a week there to eat and enjoy the meals offered. We have managed to meet new people and even make new friends, which has enriched our experience in Milan. It was also a way for us to learn more about Italian culture, including speaking a new language that we are still trying to learn. By eating there, we also realized that the food is really qualitative. It is tasty, hot, and healthy. It also gives us the opportunity to eat some traditional Italian food, which we do not know about. As surprising as it may seem, mensas are, in the end, one of the richest places for exchange students as it allows us to meet new people, speak a new language with local employees, try new food, and eventually become a weekly ritual among friends.
