Maryland adds to retail mix with unique concepts

Retail dining has taken a couple of unique upward turns this spring at the University of Maryland (UMD) in College Park. First, a concept called Samovar opened in late March in a renovated wing of the school’s H.J. Patterson Hall with a menu that includes customized ramen soup bowls, sushi and specialty teas made in, yes, a samovar (an urn used to make tea in Russia).

Then in the last week of April came Applause, a newly renovated café in UMD’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center that specializes in braises, ragouts and customizable composed salads.

The menus at both are fairly unique on campus and thus serve to broaden the overall range of selections.

Samovar sits next to the Edward St. John Learning & Teaching Center, which will see some 14,000 students a day when it opens this fall.

The Edward St. John building itself will have only very limited food options, mostly grab and go, “so we wanted to have something right across the plaza that is more substantial,” explains Joe Mullineaux, senior associate director for UMD Dining.

The sandwiches at Samovar, as well as some salads and the sushi are premade and offered as grab and go, but all the ramen bowls—the station’s most popular offering so far—are made to order. Students choose a broth and protein, including tofu, and then customize with an array of vegetables, herbs and sauces.

The station offers an assortment of teas, but the centerpiece is a tea of the day made in the samovar, and “we’re getting a tremendous number of people just walking in for tea,” Mullineaux observes. “We also have Starbucks in there with its espressos, but tea seems to really be the thing.”

The Edward St. John building houses international departments such as Russian studies and Chinese studies, “so we go around the world with our teas of the day,” Mullineaux says. “In fact, our manager who oversees Samovar is from Russia, so she takes a very personal interest in it.”

Another unique offering at Samovar is a coffee/tea blend called Java Zen that was developed by a team of three students, “and we’re helping them with their launch by offering it at Samovar,” Mullineaux says.

Samovar is currently open only in the morning and early afternoon, “but that will change when the St. John Center opens,” says Mullineaux, noting that classes will extend into the late afternoon at the facility, necessitating all-day service during the week. It will remain closed on weekends as that part of campus is a “dead zone” when classes are not in session, he says.

Currently, traffic only averages about a hundred a day, since the building is largely isolated from the rest of the campus by fences surrounding the Edward St. John construction site. Those are expected to be removed June 1, at which point, “we’ll have this nice, wide open area that is basically a pathway from one side of campus to the other.”

Another construction project on campus involved Applause, which Mullineaux describes as “all healthy. [The menu] is a combination of made-to-order salads, upscale sandwiches, composed salads and then also we have a grain of the day, a potato of the day, a roasted vegetable of the day and a braise of the day.”

Customers make their own soft drinks using carbonated water and their choice of flavored syrups.

Applause is open during the day to serve students and staff takings classes in the building, as well as for evening performances. The concept drew about 250 customers over its first three days of operation.