As we welcome everyone back to campus this fall, I’m excited about what’s taking shape across Rice Dining.
Over the past several months, our team has been focused on more than simply opening new dining locations. We’ve been thinking about how we can continue to evolve the campus dining landscape—bringing in greater variety, creating spaces that serve different parts of the Rice community and offering more choices in the types of food and dining experiences available throughout the day.
This semester, you’ll see some of that work come to life. From new concepts in McNair Hall and changes at Sammy’s to expanded menus and new Houston partners, here are five ways the dining landscape at Rice is growing.
1. New Spaces, New Opportunities
The opening of Audrey’s and Rice Business Café in McNair Hall gave us an opportunity to build two completely new dining experiences from the ground up.
Audrey’s expands our campus coffee program with handcrafted coffee and espresso beverages, breakfast, pastries and grab-and-go options in a space designed to serve the rhythm of the business school.
Rice Business Café allows us to do something different. Rather than a single concept, the café brings several offerings together under one roof, including the new Owl Street Tacos, the return of Whoo Deli, and additional globally inspired concepts and grab-and-go selections.
Together, these spaces expand dining on that side of campus while giving us room to introduce new ideas and continue evolving them based on the needs of the Rice community.
2. Bringing More Variety to the RMC
Sammy’s at the Rice Memorial Center has long been an important dining hub, and this semester we’ve focused on bringing greater variety to the space.
Ambassador Café has evolved into APAC – Pan Asian Cuisine, with a dedicated chef, full wok station and dishes prepared fresh in small batches throughout service. The rotating menu of rice and noodle dishes allows us to offer a wider range of proteins, vegetables and flavors while continuing to build on a concept already familiar to the Rice community.
We’ve also welcomed Trill Burgers, bringing a well-known Houston brand and its signature smash burgers to campus, while Oui Bánh Mì continues to expand beyond bánh mì sandwiches with pho, rice and noodle dishes, spring rolls and rotating Vietnamese specialties.
The result is a broader mix of cuisines, operators and dining styles within one of the busiest areas of campus.
3. More Than One Kind of Café
A campus café doesn’t have to look—or taste—the same everywhere.
That idea is reflected in spaces like Dandelion Café and Moody Café, which each serve the communities around them in very different ways.
Dandelion offers a broad café menu ranging from breakfast and specialty coffee to sandwiches, paninis, burgers and salads. Moody Café combines coffee and traditional café offerings with boba teas, refreshers and other specialty beverages in the creative environment of the Moody Center for the Arts.
Alongside Audrey’s and our other coffee destinations, these spaces allow us to create distinct experiences rather than repeating the same concept across campus.
4. Growing While Keeping Rice Favorites
Diversifying dining doesn’t mean replacing what already works.
Local Foods at Brochstein Pavilion continues to be an important gathering place for the campus community, offering artisan coffee, breakfast, sandwiches, soups, salads and baked goods in one of Rice’s most recognizable spaces.
Hollywood Café at the BioScience Research Collaborative continues to provide another style of neighborhood café experience, with breakfast and lunch options ranging from breakfast sandwiches and burritos to bánh mì, salads and wraps.
And at Cohen House, Curbside at the Club gives our culinary team another way to serve the campus community by making freshly prepared breakfast and lunch available through convenient online ordering and pickup.
Maintaining these established options while adding new ones is an important part of creating a dining program with both familiarity and choice.
5. Building a Dining Program for the Whole Campus
Ultimately, all of these changes are part of a larger goal.
Rice is a diverse campus, and our dining landscape should reflect that. That means continuing to expand the cuisines represented on campus, creating options for different dietary needs and preferences, providing a range of service styles and price points, and thinking intentionally about where dining is available across campus.
It also means recognizing that people use our spaces differently. Sometimes dining is about sitting down with colleagues. Sometimes it’s coffee between meetings, a quick meal between classes or something you can order ahead and take with you.
There is still more work ahead, but I’m proud of the direction we’re moving and of the teams and partners who have worked incredibly hard to bring these spaces and concepts to life.
As the semester gets underway, I hope the Rice community begins to see not just more places to eat, but a broader and more dynamic dining program taking shape across campus.
Explore menus, locations and operating hours through Rice Dining’s Community Dining webpage.