Time to kick Harvard to the wayside…it’s all about attending the most burger-ific school in the world! McDonald’s Hamburger University in China has an acceptance rate of less than 1%–more than six percentage points fewer than this past year’s acceptance rate at Harvard.

Hamburgers or hairy girls...that is the question...

While Harvard has record numbers of applications coming in year after year, its competitiveness is no match for numbers of McDonald’s managers vying to be trained in this prestigious program. In addition, there is NO tuition to attend Hamburger University, while tuition at Harvard has steeped to approximately $54,000. McDonald’s pays approximately $1,500 per person for them to partake in this intensive 5-day program.

Why are so many Chinese vying to learn the ways of Ronald McDonald? As of July 1, 2010, 26 percent of China’s 6.3 million college graduates were unemployed, and the fast-food giant offers the possibility of employment as well as opportunity to move up through the hierarchy of the system.

So ditch your psets, burn your books, and give away your winter coat–it’s about time we all head to China for a lesson off the Dollar Menu. How’s that for food for thought?

NOMNOMNOM food for thought NOMNOMNOM

A new restaurant that puts the ish back in delicious.

CLOVER, a weirdly conceptual vegetarian restaurant, opened around the corner from Au Bon Pain on Holyoke Street two weeks ago. Unlike its pseudofrench neighbor, Clover takes a decidedly casual approach to food production, the effects of which are visible even to uninterested passers-by who glance through their full-length windows at the line cooks frying seitan in brightly colored aprons. Inside, customers convene over sloppy organics on lopsided faux-wood stools that gleam with the reflection of the bare white ceiling. The famously messy mission statement on the north wall is overshadowed only by the pride employees take in how quickly the place runs out of breakfast ingredients every morning.

Clover’s organic and local-grown aspirations, combined with its chain status (there are food trucks at MIT, South Station, and Kendall) and half-assed industrialist avant-garde décor, beg the question: how much concept is too much concept? No pomo, but the whole aw-look-how-honest-and-incompetent-we-are gag feels like a bit of a construct, which is what makes this place a haven for the ironically inclined.

That, and the fact that, despite its suspiciously hip aura, Clover offers some of the best, healthiest and fairest-priced food in the square. Entrees are tasty and filling at $5 each, while snacks and breakfast food are available for $4 and under at the same quality and surprising degree of tastiness. Drinks are a bit pricey at $2-$3, but worth it if you’re trying the weekly tea specialties (catnip mint?!) or delicious OJ. Highlights include the Soy BLT, beet salad, hand-cut fries and friendly staff. Though the employees will deny it, we econ concentrators here at the Voice suspect that prices will creep upwards as discerning Cambridgites sniff out this new eatery, so snag a fair-trade sandwich before the hipsters make it uncool.

UPDATE! (May 6th): The Klondike Bars will be served on Friday, May 7th, from 2pm to 3pm instead. Reason: shitty Cambridge weather, as always.

Well, not really. But these food deals will certainly lessen the pain!

- ON CAMPUS -

Brought to us by the Common Spaces Committee. Odd name? Maybe. But it’s still free food!

Wednesday: KETTLE CORN from 12:30pm-3:00pm outside Lehman Hall (the ART is also presenting a preview of a new play, Johnny Baseball, at 12:30pm). It’s like killing two birds with one stone! You can pretend to look artsy while devouring your free corn.

Thursday: KLONDIKE BARS from 2:00pm-3:00pm at the Gazebo outside Grays Hall. Bonus: A prime view of the colorful chairs and newly installed Wetu nearby in the Old Yard.

- OFF CAMPUS -

Between May 7 and May 16, head over to any Starbucks store between 3 and 5 p.m. and get a Frappuccino blended beverage at half price!

Happy eating and drinking! Just don’t put the blame on us after you step on that weighing scale.

The HUDS blog announced today some new items for the winter menu, based on answers they received in a student survey distributed in the fall. And trust us, everything sounds delicious. We’re especially excited about the make-it-yourself Korean BBQ and “Mediterranean Mezze Mondays”! Read the full listing after the jump.
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Hold onto your big bowed-headbands and fro-yo loving pants upper-Cambridge-siders, there’s a new chain coming to town. Noice would like to alert you that the infamous frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry of Los Angeles and New York City fame is on its way to Boston. Looks like Berryline will have to step up the competition—not to mention Red Mango is now in the mix too. This is like the East Coast/West Coast rap battle but way more delicious.

What do you think of this froyo battle? Who’s gonna win?

Photo credit: here.

Noice was about to sit down to a dinner of french onion soup and crusty wholewheat bread when suddenly something equally french, but infinitely more tasty-looking caught our attention.

Introducing LE WHIF, the product of the tireless of work of Harvard Professor David Edwards and his team of students. Edwards writes: “Over the centuries we’ve been eating smaller and smaller quantities at shorter and shorter intervals. It seemed to us that eating was tending toward breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we’ve helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion. We call it whiffing.” All sounds very odd to us, but here goes!

The small lipstick sized plastic container fits comfortably in the hand and is very light. Pull it out, raise it to the lips and inhale! Suddenly a rush of the most delicious chocolate flavor as thousands of aerosol chocolate particles burst onto the tongue. LE WHIF comes in three awesome flavors (Noice loves them all very, very much): Dark (rich, creamy tasting) Chocolate, Mint Chocolate, and Raspberry Chocolate. Each LE WHIF is worth three or four shots (or whiffs?!) of chocolate heavenly-ness and, whilst you’re not enjoying the instant chocolate satisfaction, you can simply click it shut and pop it back into your manbag, purse, or pocket.

LE WHIF is doing the rounds in many of the upperclassmen houses so keep a look out and tell your friends. However, more importantly, come along to the Grand Opening of The Laboratory this Sunday 8th in the late afternoon and witness an incredible (and sometimes chocolaty) collision of art and science. Buy those tickets!

(If you’re interested in learning more about LE WHIF and the other amazing products by this group just go to www.lewhif.com and www.thelaboratory.harvard.edu)

Photos courtesy of www.lewhif.com

For all you foodies and other starved students out there, I lovingly bestow upon you my midterm pick-me-upper, my “fml General Gao’s chicken again” curative, my black book of food fetishes – a collection of my food porn pics.

These are pictures of dishes that were just so good that I needed a visual testimony to their toe-curling deliciousness, and can only be fully appreciated one at a time.

So my first treat comes from Susan Feniger’s Street in Los Angeles. These savory little packages of pleasure are Spinach Varenykys, Ukranian pan-fried dumplings filled with spinach and a light layer of salted cheese. Fried onions and lemon marmalade offset the luxuriously creamy filling.

Now if this isn’t masochism for the palate, I couldn’t tell you what is.