1070 Arcadia LoopSo, Western Michigan University’s new student finally opened.
It took a while with some construction delays but the student center opened just a few weeks ago in time for the fall semester.
I don’t spend a lot of time at WMU but I am there occasionally. I would always try to make my way to the basement of the Bernhard Center when a new restaurant opened there. There were some interesting places that came in and out of there almost every year. Nothing seemed to stick around.
The new student center seems to be going for longevity. They have a few dining options that are kind of copycats of pretty well established brands. I was in the area last week and went a little out of my way to check the first one off my list.
Fuego Verde is the Mexican restaurant set up in the new student center. Like it’s predecessor, the restaurants are on the bottom floor but in this case, it’s not has hard to get to. There’s an entrance that’s easily accessible as you’re coming from the Library back to the Sangren Mall. Unlike the Bronco Mall entrance, this is one students will walk past daily and it’s also where the book store is located.
The restaurant looks like a Chipotle or Qdoba and that’s pretty much what it is. There’s an order counter where you pick what you want (bowl, burrito, taco, etc), pick your protein, then pick your toppings.
The menu is on a pair of TV monitors hanging above the kitchen area. It’s a little hard to read but if you’ve been to one of the big chain restaurants I mentioned in the last paragraph, you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing here.
I picked the 3 tacos option with steak as my protein. The restaurant has just opened recently so there’s still some training going on. One of the newer employees was assigned the task of putting my tacos together which started with heating up three corn tortillas then filling them with the bits of steak before moving down the line.
I kept my tacos pretty simple with just cilantro, onion, and a pico. When the tacos were done, they were passed off to the cashier around the corner to ring up. At this point, I also added some chips and queso. The cost for my meal was right around $15.
This new space has a pretty spacious dining room for the multiple restaurants. In addition to this Mexican place, there is a grab-and-go market and a create your own pizza place (think Blaze or Mod Pizza….don’t worry, we’ll get to that one eventually). The bright, multi-use space is good not only for dining but it was built as a community gathering spot. I had some other work to do so I grabbed my food and headed back to the car.
I opened up the bag of chips first when I got to the car. Pretty standard tortilla chip. Again, comparable to something like Chipotle or Qdoba but not as heavily seasoned as those places can be. The queso was in a pretty small cup. It was just big enough to dip the corner of the chip in to. There were more chips than available queso but the chips were fine on their own so that wasn’t a huge deal.
The tacos were, again, pretty standard tacos. Nothing super fancy. There could have been a little more filling in each one. The tortilla to filling ratio definitely favored the tortilla. Flavor wise, it was really good. The meat was tender and easy to bite through. I picked the spicy red sauce which added some heat but nothing over powering.
Fuego Verde seems like a place that is going to do well with college students. The concept is something most people already know. I could use the portion sizes to be slightly bigger but on the other hand, I didn’t have any complaints about still being hungry when I was done with my lunch. This whole new student center is such an improvement over the aging Bernhard Center. The restaurants are in a much better place and hopefully that exposure will keep them open longer than restaurants seemed to last at the Bronco Mall.