Cinco Cantina, a pop-up restaurant designed by Lafayette Dining, opened for lunch from Tuesday to Thursday. Students were able to use a digital pass and eat for free as part of Lafayette’s plan to formally replace Miss Jackson’s Kitchen by the fall semester.
Some students attending the pop-up mentioned that Cinco, which offered customizable burritos, bowls and tacos, could address some of the challenges currently facing the college’s dining services.
“If you want high calorie, high protein,” Harrison Zoller ‘27 said, “I think that is what Cinco is very reminiscent of.”
“I’d say having more global food was something that we kind of lacked last semester,” Reese Dawson ‘27 said, adding that the new restaurant will help with the issue.
Despite these benefits, some students still have some reservations about the future of these pop-ups like Cinco.
“If it [offers] meal swipes, I’d say it’s worth it,” Zoller said. But if the restaurant were to only accept Pard Dollars, according to Zoller, the quality of food served by Cinco would not be worth the expense.
Cinco Cantina was designed using student feedback after the Student Government Dining Ad Hoc Committee opened a survey to students in November. According to Tony Williams, the Parkhurst Dining district manager, students were overwhelmingly in favor of a Mexican-inspired dining option that accepts meal swipes.
“Cinco aligns with the feedback we received from the survey and student dining committee,” Williams wrote in an email.
Attendees of the pop-up were asked to complete a survey about their experience. Their feedback will be used to help guide the process of designing Lafayette’s next dining option.
“We plan to collect feedback from the Cinco pop-up and then discuss those results with the student dining committee,” Williams wrote. “Based on those conversations, we will start mapping out the next steps.”
Cinco Cantina is the first of what will be a series of similar pop-ups, part of a plan to have a permanent establishment in place by this fall. More updates will be announced to the college in the future.
“As plans develop with Cinco, we will communicate updates to the community,” Williams wrote. “This was just the introduction of Cinco to gather feedback from the community.”
