Rachel O’Connor ‘26

If you’ve been to Barb or Bates lately you’ve probably also heard at least one person complain about the food. Better Than the Barb (BTTB) is a student-run small business providing students with an affordable and healthier alternative to the dining hall food the Sarah Lawrence community has such strong opinions on. I had the opportunity to talk with the two students who run BTTB about what inspired them to start their business and what goes on behind the scenes. While they chose to remain anonymous they had a lot of insightful things to say about their efforts and their love of cooking.

This interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

(RACHEL O’CONNOR): The Sarah Lawrence student body has a lot of vocal opinions on Bates and Barb and I wanted to ask you guys how you feel about the dining options on campus.

(A): I think one thing I noticed right off the bat was that there was not much, like, cultural food options. Especially because I’m an international student and it was like: ‘woah, I don’t think any of this would suit my palate.’ And even the options they have like the samosas or the hot food in Barb, it's not exactly healthy. So it's like you either get one or the other. It's either healthy or it's cultural, you can’t have both.

(B): I didn’t expect the food here to be that good to begin with. But I guess after freshman year, I just didn’t really go…Bates was just kind of out of the way so I never really went. And in general both the food was okay…I just make food at home usually and I just know I could make better food than both of them.

(RO): What inspired you to start BTTB as an alternative option?

(B): I think in general we always just cook for ourselves at home. We also don’t eat that much and often have leftovers. Might as well see if anybody would want to buy the food we make. And honestly people were really interested in it, so we set up the ordering and delivering.

(A): I think also–we do really enjoy cooking. We really like to have diverse food options and try out new recipes. But that’s not really accessible in this area unless you take like a train to the city. So when we were like: ‘oh if we cook we can also help other people out on campus.’ Especially since Hill is an area that’s so inaccessible to both Barb and Bates on foot, during cold weather, during rain. Just in general even if you have a disability. It's difficult to get around on campus. So we were like it would just be really nice if people could have food in their dorms.

(RO): What is your system to run it and do deliveries?

(A): We just use Instagram as a mode of communication. We post our designated dinner of the day on Instagram by 1 p.m., wait until 5 [p.m.] until we finalize the orders. We only have four slots because we don’t cook that much.

(B): Which we recently decided to do because one time we had like multiple orders in one day and it was just a lot for us because we had to cook multiple rounds. Because we didn’t want to cancel them because we felt bad.

(A): We usually deliver sometime between 8 and 9. We’re just constantly communicating like: ‘we’re cooking right now,’ ‘we’re on our way delivering.’ Yeah, so it's just like a direct communication with the person who’s buying the food on the day of.

(RO): I was going to ask how it's been going so far, but based on the fact you got a bunch of orders in one day I’m guessing it's going pretty well.

(A): Yeah. I definitely think we have up and down days. Depending on if people are out in the city during the weekend or if people are overworked and don’t want to cook on a Monday, on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday. It varies. We’re also trying to diversify our food options because we’re both…we eat a lot of meat. But we also do want to keep a vegetarian option open.

(B): Yeah. Like have it as [an option] available to as many students as possible. So we’re trying to do more vegetarian.

(A): More vegan options.

(RO): How do you plan what your meals are gonna be for the week, do you figure it out the day of, like what you’re feeling, or do you have a schedule?

(A): I think on Sunday we start thinking about what we want to eat during the week and accordingly we’ll grocery, we’ll meal plan. And we’ll just figure it out. We do plan on Sundays.

(B): The thing is I think typically we’re already, like, thinking about it. We’re both kinda already thinking what we want to eat. So then usually we get out our meals by the week so we know what ingredients we need to have for that week. And then we go grocery shopping to specifically buy those things. And usually I’d say we sell out of those things because of how we eat and just the orders. So the next week, it's like fresh food again and another round of grocery shopping.

(RO): What’s it like cooking for extra people everyday? Is it a leftovers situation or do you have to make extra batches?

(B): When we first started it, it was like, ‘oh we have excess food.’ But now I feel like we kinda eat after. Because we deliver all the food first and portion it out for whoever ordered and deliver [it]. And once we’re done with the delivery then we come back home and eat.

(A): Each day varies because we have different slots.

(B): Different amounts of orders.

(A): Honestly I feel like it's not that big of a task to cook for extra people because there’s two of us. And like we can gauge how much we eat and it isn’t that much. It's kind of a smooth process because we evenly distribute the tasks between ourselves.

(RO): Just out of curiosity, how big is your kitchen? Because there are some really tiny Hill kitchens and some are huge.

(B): It's not a huge kitchen, it is one of the ones where it's the hallway, the stove, and the counter.

(A): But two people can honestly easily work in it. There are obviously times where she wants to open the fridge, I’m in the way. It is a little bit of a cramped situation, as is most New York City, New York City adjacent kitchens. But, it's not too bad, like, as the other Hill kitchens I’ve seen, you can’t open certain kitchen cabinets. Two people cannot be in the kitchen at the same time. It's pretty comfortable I’d say.

(RO): Is it possible for people to customize their orders if they have dietary restrictions or spice level?

(A): We have a kind of story highlight put up on Instagram where it’s like if you have any dietary preferences let us know beforehand. And I feel like there is a general level of customization within the food. We try to offer vegetarian and non-vegetarian food options, add ons, whenever we can

(B): Because there’s some days where we can’t really get around it. If it's like mapo tofu, there’s pork in that. But other days if we’re making fried rice, if you wanna add on chicken, if you wanna add on tofu, that’s your choice.

(A): Like if it's a curry, we can opt for tofu or chicken, like whatever the person prefers.

(RO): How much time would you say you spend cooking a day?

(B): At least an hour. Usually we are … finished between 8 and 9. We generally start around 7.

(A): Honestly, it's kind of like intermittent the way we cook. We’ll have something ready. We’ll take a break. We’ll have something ready. Just end up cooking together, I feel like the time is cut short because there's two people working. And there’s not a huge amount of food.

(RO): What do the portions look like?

(A): I feel like usually there's a carb portion, like rice. So half rice, half curry.

(B): There’s always a carb and like a curry or a stir-fry dish or a noodle dish.

(A): Because we do–do mostly, if not only, Asian food. I think the portions are good enough for a meal and a snack, you need a snack after. We’re not exactly pricing it like a full meal either. If you want more you can add on another order. And we do rice refills.

(B): Sometimes we’re like: ‘oh if you want more food,’cause honestly we do make too much food…‘oh if you want more just let us know because we have a lot more.’ We also have been trying to ask people who order if the portion size is enough because we want people to feel like they’re getting their money's worth.

(RO): What meals have you made so far?

(B): We’ve made kimchi fried rice, stir fried ramen, kimchi udon

(A): Spinach dal, chicken curry…

(B): Crispy pork belly, we did a lot of pork. Ribs that one time.

(A): We did do ribs. We do desserts, as well, sometimes. When we have the time and we’re feeling like we wanna cook more or we wanna have some desserts. We did an ube toast.

(B): These sweet rice balls that are a traditional Chinese dessert, but we make it a little more easy going for I guess a college lifestyle.

(RO): How are you balancing classes and running BTTB?

(B): A lot of communication. And it's dependent on the day because we both have extracurriculars and classes. So it's just like, ‘oh on this day I have something to do in the evening, is it okay if I–like–prepare the vegetables? Can you do most of the cooking? Because I might not be home at the right time.’ I think that’s why planning ahead what meals we cook helps a lot with our class schedule. Because we know this day might have more work with the cooking and other days we chose an easier meal to make because it's easier for us.

(A): I think we’re really lucky it's two people running it. Because sometimes… it's just not possible with our schedule and we rely on the other person. And the good thing about running BTTB is that it's predominantly focused in the evening. So I feel like a lot of the work that I need to do gets done during the day and I’m like, ‘okay time to cook now.’ And I feel like it's what we did last year too. We would cook anyway. I feel like I particularly have a lifestyle where I will cook at home and it's just a part of my daily routine. And it doesn’t really occupy so much of my time where I’m like I need to work around this. I feel like everything is integrated within my schedule to the point where I don’t really have to allocate or feel like I’m not getting work done.

(RO): I noticed on your Instagram that you have a list of what dorms you deliver to. Is it just Hill, is it other dorms?

(A): So we do…free deliveries if it's in Hill, floor one to six. As for the other dorms, when it comes to houses on Midland Avenue, like Andrews, Slonim, and Kober I think, it's just a dollar for the delivery fee. Because we are taking time out of our hands to walk over there because neither of us have cars. And for [the] main campus I think it's $3 because it is quite a trek from Hill.

(B): It's also, I think, because the one time we delivered multiple orders to the main campus and it's hard to carry them.

(A): Especially because we do deliver hot food, so sometimes it's not exactly the most accessible for us to do that either. But, for any resident on campus, pickup is free from our dorm.

(RO): Do you plan on expanding?

(B): Well, we’re going to be at the block party on Oct. 8 [and] we started doing breakfast.

(A): Yeah, honestly, I feel like with our current level of extracurricular because we’re both working jobs on campus, we’re both in clubs, we’re not sure we want to expand because it feels comfortable where we are. We’re happy with what we’re doing. People like our food, we like our food, and I feel like we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin and compromise on the quality of our food. I feel like we’re in a goldilocks zone with it. happy with everything, and we feel like we’re getting compensated enough for our efforts as well.

(RO): That’s all the questions I prepared in advance, but is there anything that you guys feel is important for you to say?

(B): I guess I was thinking, honestly, BTTB is just what we’ve been doing, everything we cook, we eat. It literally is just everything we cook and eat and we were like, maybe we’ll just open it up to people.

(A): That’s kind of our motto.

(B): It's literally just what we used to do in the past and now we’ve just made it public to everyone. And [we’ve] been like, if you want to try our food, feel free to order from us.

If you want to try Better Than The Barb make sure to check them out on Instagram @betterthanthebarb and stop by the POC Block Party on Oct. 8.

Behind Better Than The Barb