Greenfields International Cafe

Fresh, healthy food right on the heart of Notre Dame's campus. My own university of Texas A&M has been slow to wake up to the fact that an increasingly diverse and health-conscious body of students, staff, and faculty want more then greasy burgers and deep fried factory raised chicken pieces. The new restaurants in our renovated student union are a major step in the right direction.
Greenfields has been here for years and sets a template. Vegetarian options, home made soups, salads, just plain good food served in a better then average looking cafeteria setting.

We found this place after asking the woman at the desk in the visitors' center at Notre Dame for on-campus lunch recommendations.

We opted for the Thai Noodle bowl with coconut broth and shrimp. The food was a pretty pleasant surprise for a cafeteria-style fast-food place. The broth was nicely spicy with plentiful noodles and veggies...and they did not skimp on the shrimp.
I wasn't wild about the Lipton's ice tea that you had to go get from a thermal jug (it was weak, and I don't care for that brand in the first place.

I really like Greenfields in theory, but I only like Greenfields in reality a little bit.  

I'll start with the positives.  The place is clean, and the workers are always very nice.  It's also usually pretty easy to grab a place to sit.  I've had pretty delicious food here on occasion.

On the negative side, this place could be so much better if it lived up to its own hype.  It's not that bad a place to grab something to eat, but the way you hear about it when you're at Notre Dame you would think it's a fancy sit-down restaurant with amazing food from all over the world.  I will give them the fact that they do have a very interesting menu that changes often, but I've had a bunch of interesting-looking food here that was either bland or just really conflicted.

This is kind of a cool place to bring people because most people don't go anywhere near the Hesburgh Center (not to be confused with the Hesburgh Library, which everyone knows about).  So be an insider and introduce people to Greenfields; just don't expect that they'll be all that impressed.