Steam Cafe

The Steam Café at MIT in Cambridge, MA serves up great food and community interaction. It arose as a collaborative venture of School of Architecture and Planning students, MIT Dining, and the Sodexo Corporation (the company that runs most of the food service on campus), and it was a response to this question, hitherto muttered or grumbled by students who felt powerless to change things: Why, given that our student body is drawn from all over the world, and boasts grandmothers that can cook a mean moussaka or fantastic fish curry, are our dining options here so limited? So the Steam Cafe was conceived as a way to break through rigid business models, shyness and a complacent corporate food culture by engaging MIT students and faculty with healthful, delicious food choices that represented the diverse global Institution. Patrons were invited to submit recipes online, and sample the results as early as a week later. The cafe's still going strong seven years later. For the full story, contact us.