Why Tech Eats So Well

Ask any alum about Tech food and you will get a dish, a dining hall and an opinion. That loyalty has a starting point, and it is a policy, not a recipe.

In 1996 Virginia Tech adopted a universal flex meal plan that worked at retail outlets as well as dining halls. Your meal plan stopped being a ticket to one cafeteria and started working like money.

Once students could spend anywhere, the outlets had to compete for them. In 1997 Chick-fil-A and Pizza Hut opened on campus. According to FoodService Director, both quickly became among their chains’ top-grossing units.

Eating on campus used to be much simpler. The first students in 1872 ate in town, at places like the Western Hotel at Main and Jackson. The first Mess Hall, built in 1874, was a frame building near today’s Ag Quad.

West End Market opened in 1999 in Cochrane Hall, built on restaurateur Richard Melman’s FoodLife-style marketplace concept. Today it has six venues: Blend, Fighting Gobbler, JP’s Chop House, Leaf & Ladle, Rosso with its 1,000-degree pizza oven, and Seven70.

The dish is London broil with roasted garlic whipped potatoes and red wine mushroom sauce. Fox News, covering a 2012 Tech cookbook, called it “the most popular dish at VT.” Lobster bisque was served daily.

JP’s serves steak and lobster every day. After a renovation, FoodService Director reported, JP’s did over a million transactions a year and its sales rose 16 percent, more than $300,000.

And because this is Tech, the Fighting Gobbler sports bar redesign set a piece of Hokie Stone into each tabletop.

D2 in Dietrick Hall opened in 2004 as an all-you-care-to-eat hall with high-end international food, including a Brazilian churrascaria. Dining Services calls it one of two unlimited-access dining centers on campus.

On Dietrick’s first floor, Deet’s Place roasts its own beans. Viridian is a kitchen free of the top nine allergens.

Owens is the old soul of the system. Its exterior was finished in 1939, and it was renovated in 1987 as a banquet hall and again in 1991 as the Food Court. It is named for John Joseph “Pop” Owens, the mess steward from 1917 to 1940.

Turner Place, a multilevel retail dining hall in Lavery Hall, opened in 2013 and won a 2013 Best Concept Award. It is home to the 1872 Fire Grill, a Southern meat-and-three, plus Origami for hibachi and sushi and Atomic Pizzeria. Fox News reported its grill would run on local hardwood supplied by the forestry club.

Tech fans love a ranking, and dining has plenty. These come from the Princeton Review’s Best Campus Food list and Niche’s Best College Food list, as Dining Services and news coverage report them.

Princeton Review: No. 2 in 2011 and No. 3 in 2012, per Fox News. Dining Services then lists No. 1 in the 2015 edition, No. 3 in 2016, No. 4 in 2017, No. 6 in 2018, No. 3 in 2019, No. 5 in 2020 and No. 8 in 2021. Virginia Tech News reported No. 8 again on the 2024 list.

Niche, by the year Dining Services lists: No. 1 in 2016, No. 2 in 2017 and 2018, No. 1 in 2019, and No. 2 every year from 2020 through 2023. It was No. 3 of almost 1,500 schools in 2024. Virginia Living reported No. 2 on Niche’s 2026 list.

A few more for the trophy case. Newsweek ranked Tech No. 2 of 25 in 2021. Lendedu named West End Market its No. 1 college dining hall in 2015.

The biggest award came in 2018. Food Management magazine gave Virginia Tech its Best of Show, the top prize of its Best Concept program, which has run since 1998. No university had won it since Stanford in 2012.

The scale behind that is huge. As of 2018, Virginia Tech News reported, Dining Services was the largest employer on campus, with more than 2,200 employees serving more than 7.5 million meals a year.

That same year it sold about 19,000 meal plans. That is roughly double the 9,471 students living on campus.

The national honors kept coming. Dining Services lists NACUFS Loyal E. Horton grand prizes for “Shiki” and for its “30th Annual Chili Challenge,” and No. 1 college sales volume for Chick-fil-A in 2017.

In 2012 alumni Krista Gallagher and Kris Schoels published “A Taste of Virginia Tech,” 80 recipes from dining halls, tailgates and Main Street restaurants. The picks include West End Market’s Grilled Old Hickory Burger, Rob’s Armadillo Tails and Rail Brownies.

Main Street food deserves its own story, but one stop has earned a line here. TOTS, short for Top of the Stairs, at 217 College Ave., was established in 1978. The bar’s own site says so, and so does its sign. It is known for its signature drink, the Rail, for Tuesday karaoke and for its sister bar, Bottom of the Stairs.

From a 1996 meal plan to a 2018 Best of Show, Tech built a food culture people still talk about years after graduation. Go get the London broil.