The Good, The Bad, And the Very Very Ugly: Courtside Cafe

Image credit Kevin Payravi, via Wikimedia Commons

The Good, The Bad, and The Very Very Ugly is an AROUSE special series tackling the ins and outs of campus food.  

Step aside, Gordon Ramsay. We have a new Michelin star restaurant in Columbus, and you can find it right on campus in the RPAC. Well, not really. But it gets close.  

The west campus staple Courtside Café stands as one of the few bright spots in the sea of institutional boredom by the Olentangy. Don’t let its name mislead you – far from just offering breakfast staples, Courtside boasts a wide menu that can appeal to all students. You can order pasta, sandwiches, burgers, steaks, and items off their sauté menu at this incredible spot. 

I’ll be honest, I never tried Courtside until this year due to its remote location. However, I recently got a job over on west campus, so in between trudging through the tundra that campus becomes in the winter I’ve found plenty of time to stop in. I’ll tell you, getting Courtside Café always makes the journey just a little more bearable.   

Anyways, onto The Good! I absolutely love the sheer quality of the food here. The burgers, the sandwich station, and the Sautee menu are, by campus food standards, absolutely delicious. Not to slander Scott Traditions or anything, but sometimes their food can get old incredibly fast. Whenever I try something new here, I am always blown away. I love Courtside’s burgers – whether it be the Smash Burger or the BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, these guys always make my day just a little bit better.  

Now for The Bad. Honestly, I have nothing that bad to say about Courtside, beyond its remote location and the fact that burgers close WAYYY too early at 4pm. Like, seriously, no one wants a burger at 3:30.   

Finally, we have the Very Very Bad. I know I spent the large majority of this article praising the quality of Courtside’s food. However, I have one MASSIVE issue. That being the salmon. Never. Trust. Campus. Salmon. It didn’t give me food poisoning insofar as it straight up made me sad. It was so miserable in fact that if Gordon Ramsay himself tasted it, it would probably put Courtside Café on a one-way ticket to Kitchen Nightmares. I don’t know what I was thinking when I ordered the most depressing meal I’ve had on campus to date.  

Other than the salmon from the deepest pit of the Mariana Trench, I love Courtside Café with my whole heart. From incredible post-workout snacks to some of the best food on campus, period, Courtside delivers.