On the morning of her first day trip to Chicago, Sophia Ahmed of New York selected a grilled vegetable and hummus wrap sack lunch. Four hours later, she realized her mistake: the wrap was not safe to eat after having been in the sun all day.
“There’s no way that hummus is safe after that, so I did throw it out,” Ahmed said.
She bought a ham and cheese croissant at a cafe in the lobby of the Medill Chicago building.
Ahmed is one of many cherubs who ran to different restaurants in the city after throwing out their sack lunches. College dining, as tasty as it is, only has so much to offer.
Declan Smith of Chicago used the lunch times to escape the dining hall food he had been eating every day.
“I’m back in my hometown, and I’ve been eating dining hall food and Evanston food for so long,” Smith said. “I want to just try something that, you know, I might have visited before.”
During the first cherub visit to Chicago, Smith grabbed a chicken sandwich from Shake Shack on the go. During the newsroom visit trip to Navy Pier, Smith and his friends enjoyed chicken shawarma wraps and pralines.
Others, like Lilly Traylor of Dallas, mixed their sack lunch with other food in Chicago. During her first visit downtown, Traylor ate the apple and cookie from her sack lunch with Chick-fil-A grilled chicken nuggets and a kale salad. She described it as a great food experience.
During her second visit to Chicago, she and a friend tried fresh Mediterranean bowls at Rōti Modern Mediterranean.
“From what I can tell, all the cherubs really enjoyed walking around and trying new places that aren’t in their hometowns,” Traylor said. “I know not everyone here is from a big city where there are different restaurants available.”
