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Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Downtown Evanston has a food problem in particular, late night food problem, Northwestern university is right next door and the students are hungry for food 24 7, but the COVID 19 pandemic for some of the last remaining late night refuges to close down, which leaves many students lacking options. When they're craving a midnight snack,
Speaker 1 00:00:20 I say Evanson as a whole is not like a nightlife town and their restaurants close very early sometimes like even before, like I normally dinner,
Speaker 2 00:00:27 If you are hungry at all after 8:00 PM in Evanson, like you're kind of out of luck.
Speaker 3 00:00:33 Like there's no like late night snack spots at two in the morning. And I'm very sad about that.
Speaker 4 00:00:39 It's kind of just Uber eats wherever you can find a deal.
Speaker 5 00:00:42 Um, I would say I don't even really think about getting late night food anymore, just cuz I know there's no options. And if there are options it's ridiculously expensive
Speaker 6 00:00:51 And I don't know, I kind of expected more from a college town. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 0 00:00:55 But one student run restaurant is helping change that problem. They're called the table and they're open for delivery from 10 P PM to 1:00 AM on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They're trying to cater to the Northwestern population that most Evanston restaurants aren't, but they're still relatively unknown among the student body. So I went down to their kitchen to see what it's about.
Speaker 7 00:01:15 My name is, uh, Joshua bloom. Um, I'm currently a junior at Northwestern university.
Speaker 0 00:01:21 That's Josh bloom. He didn't start the table, but he's the mastermind behind their current operation.
Speaker 7 00:01:27 I'm the managing director. So I oversee the operations for the table. I help develop the menu, run the meetings. I cook the food. I do it all basically. Um, but I have a great team to support me as well.
Speaker 0 00:01:36 The table started in 2017 serving breakfast food early in the morning to give students on campus, another breakfast option. But as the COVID pandemic hit the table, switched it business model from serving breakfast to focusing on the late night scene from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM.
Speaker 7 00:01:51 I think we're, we're all in Somnia X here. So <laugh>, it's not, this is like, this is our regular hours. This is like, like, uh, this is like 7:00 PM for us.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 Josh actually doesn't like the business model they're using now and hopes to offer hours and service in the future. But he does agree that Evanston's late night food scene has been affected by the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 7 00:02:10 We're the only people in the market basically right now. So we're the only people doing late night delivery at the hours. Um, a lot of the students really love, love the food. Um, and, and love the fact that we're like solving this problem that has been around for eight.
Speaker 0 00:02:24 But since the table is an option for students, I did want to know, is the food actually good? What's on the menu.
Speaker 7 00:02:31 So I wanted something that was like late night friendly, right? Greasy food, like Mac and cheese burgers, fries, those kinds of things. Um, I feel like a lot of those foods are like pretty hard to elevate. Like pizza is like, I don't know. Pizza's pizza's pizza. Like you can get it from dominoes. It's hard to make that really good. Um, burgers are just like logistically challenging. Um, so I feel like fried chicken was like the best thing that we could make that was like very easy to execute, but like could pack in a lot of flavor.
Speaker 0 00:02:56 I came in at a pretty slow time in the night. So Josh offered to whip me up a chicken waffle sandwich, which I wasn't gonna turn down. It did get slightly delayed though.
Speaker 7 00:03:06 I don't know. I, I feel like people, um, something they don't initially realize from the tables, like the thought and care that we like put into, oh, order in AP chicken nuggets, cooking and cream milkshake. You got the milkshake, man. Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 0 00:03:19 As we were finishing up the interview, a new order came in, so Josh went to go deal with that before he made me and my sandwich. But eventually it got made.
Speaker 8 00:03:27 Oh wait, no, no, hold it up.
Speaker 9 00:03:29 Oh, the mic. Yeah. Oh, that's true.
Speaker 10 00:03:33 Excellent point. All right.
Speaker 11 00:03:38 Hmm.
Speaker 10 00:03:39 Okay. I really good.
Speaker 0 00:03:40 Yeah. That's my bad on the crunch. I took a bad bite, uh, but that did not change how I felt about the sandwich. It was definitely worth coming. If you're interested in ordering from the table, they're open for delivery from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. You can order through GrubHub or door dash at the moment for U N U R news. I'm Jack IZO.
