Apricot-glazed turkey. Meatloaf with frizzle-fried onions. And Vietnamese pho. These may not sound like typ­i­cal dorm foods espe­cially the Asian rice noo­dle soup but they topped the list of most pop­u­lar cafe­te­ria items accord­ing to Sodexo, which pro­vides food ser­vice at 600 cam­puses across the coun­try. There are regional dif­fer­ences, of course, reflect­ing the tastes stu­dents devel­oped at home. In the Midwest, the top three favorites are home-style roast beef, carved roasted turkey and mac n’ cheese, which may explain the fresh­man 15. In the Southwest region? Fish tacos. The Mid-Atlantic? Chicken pot pie.

The Sodexo sur­vey found that stu­dents want com­fort foods, said Sodexo spokes­woman Monica Zimmer. “If you are a New Englander study­ing at Tulane, maybe red beans and rice becomes your com­fort food,” Zimmer said, “and maybe for a Southerner study­ing at M.I.T., clam chow­der becomes their com­fort food.”

Vegetarian fare also has become more pop­u­lar, she said. The list was deter­mined in part from votes taken by stu­dents who attended the company’s food-trend expos held through­out the year. Feedback also came from focus groups, a restau­rant audit and other research. None of the items on the Sodexo list is as sur­pris­ing as one of the most increas­ingly pop­u­lar foods at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: kim­chi, the Korean pick­led cab­bage. U. of I. stu­dents are going through 30 to 40 gal­lons of it each day, said Dawn Aubrey, a senior assis­tant direc­tor of din­ing. Students “ove it. They use it as a condi­ment and incor­po­rate it into the made-to-order stir-fries. We have even had stu­dents put it on hot dogs,” Aubrey said. “We are going through amaz­ing amounts of it.”

Source: Sodexo © 2009, Chicago Tribune. Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://​www​.chicagotri​bune​.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.