I haven’t bought anything from Lower Bear’s Den, also known as Bear’s Bakery (a truly abysmal name) & Grill (even worse), for more than a week. I don’t plan on doing so for the rest of the semester.

If you’d asked me this time last year what the best part of Wash. U. was, I might have said Bear’s Den. I probably wouldn’t have, but I certainly would not be swearing it off. I ate at least seven or eight meals a week at Bear’s Den last year. What could possibly have happened in the less-than four months I was away that could so completely annihilate the much-beloved South 40 institution?

Instead of having all of the food available in one compact package with every food station in the same place, there are two different rooms with food. And the kicker is that even though these two mini-cafeterias are in the same building, there’s no way to get from one to the other without going outside, and there’s hardly any seating downstairs. What if it’s raining? What if it’s snowing? What if it’s just plain cold? I don’t want my hot food exposed to the cold air for as long as it takes to walk upstairs. I want my hot food exposed to my mouth.

A friend of mine said of the new Bear’s Den, “Every time I go there, they give me a new reason to hate it.” Let me illustrate my last reason to hate the new Bear’s Den.

The day was Aug. 23. I had to be at Mallinckrodt at about 2:45 p.m., so a little bit before 2 p.m., I went to Bear’s Grill (which is a terrible name, by the way), expecting that I would be able to get my buffalo chicken sandwich (sadly devoid of both Caesar dressing and house bread) and eat it with time to spare. I got in a three-person line at the grill. Seven minutes later, it was my turn. Standing under the menu board advertising buffalo chicken sandwiches, I ordered one. The woman at the register pointed to the vegetarian section and told me I had to order my meat there. I got in the back of a long line of people, all of whom, it turned out, were also getting buffalo chicken sandwiches and had also been directed to the vegetarian station by the very same cashier. After nearly half an hour of waiting in this line (during which two people from the line were helped), I took a Half-and-Half that someone else had ordered and ate it while walking because there simply wasn’t enough time to go upstairs and find a table.

Now, that may have been a particularly bad experience. That could have been the worst day in Bear’s Grill history. My best experience so far, though, has been waiting far too long for food that simply just wasn’t worth it, especially when compared to last year’s fare. And don’t even get me started on the sandwiches.

There is no higher purpose at heart here. I simply have never had a good experience at Lower Bear’s Den, and I neither have seen nor have heard any reason why that should have changed already. Truthfully, I doubt it will change at all this year.

If you believe, as I do, that Lower Bear’s Den is simply not worth the time, effort and aggravation, don’t go. When Bon Appétit tracks spending and sees it way down down there, they may change. This is the only hope I have of getting a Half-and-Half without waiting an hour and a half.

5 Comments

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  On September 9, 2009 at 11:51 am Jordan said

  1. “Aggravate” means to make worse; the work Mr. Brachman is looking for in the last paragraph is “irritation,” or perhaps “frustration.”

  2. Whatever irritation or frustration Mr. Brachman encounters in Bear’s Den is probably but a small source of distress and anger for him. Although I enjoy the local focus of this article (cf. Mr. Posner’s pieces), I wouldn’t mind seeing a more relevant, deeper article from the Student Life Forum. Or, at least, a wittier one.

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  On September 10, 2009 at 1:46 am Randy Brachman said

  1. Perhaps Jordan should have looked up the word “aggravation” yourself before correcting me. If he’d bothered, he would find out that according to dictionary.com, the word can mean “annoyance; exasperation,” and according to merriam-webster.com, it can mean “irritation, provocation.” Sometimes words have more than one meaning. Ain’t English grand?

  2. Now, Jordan, I don’t know if you live on the South 40. I don’t know if you attend Washington University in St. Louis. I don’t even know if you’re human or not. I am human, though, and I need to eat in order to simply stay alive. Not to mention how much I enjoy it (and I do). And I do live on the South 40. What, then, I ask, could possibly be more relevant than the most convenient means of my very survival, and that of my peers?
  Should I talk about Obama’s health care plan, a plan which I can never hope to understand, let alone have any effect on?
  Should I wax romantic about a war half a world away being fought for reasons no one really understands by people I don’t know?
  Should I use my precious space to go on a jeremiad about the economy and how reckless consumerism and misunderstandings of proper risk assessment and debt management could have sent life as we know it down the drain, presuming all the while to know things that people who have spent their whole lives studying economics don’t?
  I’m assuming you can read, because you managed to read at least one word that I wrote. If that’s true, then you read the headline of this article. If you are not a person who would consider going to Bear’s Den often, if at all, then you really should have figured that this article would not apply to you.
  As for wit, chacun a son gout, as they say. I will say that there were more jokes in the original draft of the article, but they got cut out somewhere along the line.

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  On September 10, 2009 at 1:52 pm Jordan said

  The subject of your study at college may be more important than the inconveniences you face at Bear’s Den. No doubt you are able to buy food from Schnucks — even if it means taking the bus or being on foot for an hour — or to be patient with the long lines at the cafeteria.

  My reply to your last three questions is: Yes. You are in college — what could be more important than fighting your self-professed ignorance? Isn’t this something college is supposed to do for you: Have you research current events, develop and refine opinions on them, and articulate those opinions in an essay or article?

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  On September 11, 2009 at 6:18 pm Randy Brachman said

  I disagree wholeheartedly. That is not the purpose of college. The purpose of college is much the same as the purpose of every formal moment of my life before college: preparation for life on my own. College is about juggling independence and responsibility. College is about obtaining skills and knowledge (not all of which is academic) which will be necessary after college. College is about refining one’s sense of individuality and purpose.

  Those questions at the end of my last post were rhetorical. They were not meant to be answered. Instead, I was saying that the discussions that I assumed (correctly, it turns out) that you think are most relevant are not discussions that I can contribute to in any meaningful way. If all of the experts disagree, what hope do I stand of coming to some concrete conclusion?

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  On October 23, 2009 at 1:06 pm twitter said

  you guys are both douches, but i agree with the critic not the author

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Tags: bear's den, Long lines

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