What on the menu in Chennai’s college canteens?

College canteens have adapted to meet students' needs, offering restaurant-like ambience and food courts with reasonably healthy meals. From birthday cakes to biryani, everything is made on campus for students and staff. Popular items include brownies, sandwiches, chilli cheese toast, breakfast combos, doughnuts, cakes, thalis, sweets, chaat, and set meals. To save time, students order and pay through apps. Nutritionists plan meals to ensure balanced diets. Audits are conducted to ensure food is hygienic and FSSAI compliant.

Remember standing in line for chilli cheese toast when you were in college? A lot has changed since then.

With UPI payment systems and in-house apps, students now pick up their orders in a scan. The staid menus of the past have been upgraded with pastas, chaat counters and specialised kiosks.

At St. Joseph group of Institutions in OMR, Chennai, A Ayyappan takes a piping bag filled with white and red icing to decorate a cake. The campus houses around 7,000 students. There are seven cakes on the table, each with ‘Happy Birthday’ written across.

“These are for the hostel students and we make almost 15 a day,” he says. They can be purchased by professors, day scholars and non teaching staff at ₹150 for a kilo, but are given free to the hostelers.

From birthday cakes to biryani, everything here is made on the campus for students and staff.

At the 108-year-old Women’s Christian College in Nungambakkam, brownies by Hannah Herur, the baker and caterer who is fondly known as Brownie Aunty, are a legacy item. “We celebrate birthdays with brownies. It has become a tradition. We saw our seniors do it, and now we do too,” says Matilda K, student.

“I have been on campus for 16 years now and try to give students the best. I usually ask them to try the food and make changes accordingly,” says Hannah. “We also make sandwiches and chilli cheese toast, that’s all the rage right now,” she adds.