Dhaba Cafe

A typical Uni fast food restaurant. They used to say they served vegetarian street food, but most of options are not vegetarian. It is quite nice to eat outside and it is possible to organise events there after the opening hours. For a better coffee or latte, go to Arts Café.

The Dhaba café has become the unofficial home of all masters anthropology and global studies students since the departmental offices relocated into Arts C. It’s the kind of café that suits these disciplines well and is decorated with tribal styled pictures and has a number of chunky sofas.
I really like this café and find that the staff who work here are more friendly than at some of the other locations on campus. There is also easy access to a number of benches outside, if you wanted to enjoy your coffee in the sun.
Prices are the standard campus rate for your coffee or tea and I do think that these are a bit steep. This aside, they serve up a fairy wide range of food for a Uni café and you can get salads, various cakes alongside a good range of sandwiches and baguettes. They will also make a baguette to your specifications (if they have the ingredients in the fridges).
There is also a computer here for accessing your library or emails, which can be handy if you need to check something but don’t want to have to fight through the queues for the library PC’s.
To be fair, there are other places I would go to eat on campus, but it is a nice location to arrange to meet class mates for a post seminar chat and stays open late enough to be a good place to prepare for a presentation for late afternoon seminars, when the café has quietened down.

Dhaba Café is probably the second best café on campus (review of the best place is coming soon…). But that’s not saying much as the University of Sussex’s catering services are notoriously crummy and seem to be growing more homogenous by the year. To its advantage, Dhaba café has a colourful décor, big cosy sofas and menu that errs toward the adventurous on occassion — think a yummy quiche (yes, believe it or not, this is adventurous by Sussex Uni catering standards!) featuring on a menu of more standard options i.e. jacket potatoes and sandwiches. Dhaba Café is one of the nicest places to grab lunch after a lecture, and the student population seems to concur with huge queues every lunchtime. Get there early and grab a sofa — it’s a nice place to catch up on reading with a coffee, that’s if you can stand the animated conversation of those two kooky kids sitting opposite, taking about cheese or whatnot (thanks Jack M.!)…

Dhaba Café is the most centrally located café on campus and is therefore a popular hangout for faculty, staff and students. The menu is not the most inspirational, but what they do, they do reasonably well. You’re basically looking at a choice between a jacket potato with a choice of fillings or a quiche/​pie, of which they normally have a few. I recently had a lunch meeting at Dhaba– I opted for the spinach and potato pie, which was tasty and relatively cheap. The reason I can’t get too excited about this café probably has a lot to do with the décor and a general lack of overall character. Admittedly there’s only so much you can do within the confines of a 60s academic building, but even the interior is tired… from the faded sofas in the corner to the grumpy staff behind the counter, it just doesn’t feel like a happy place. Despite the lackluster atmosphere, Dhaba is packed to the rafters with queues out the door every lunchtime. My explanation for this is that there just isn’t much of a selection when it comes to dining on campus. Still, it’s a fine place to grab a quick lunch– perhaps not somewhere to spend an afternoon lounging with your reading though. However, in the summer the French doors open out into the courtyard between Arts B and C, and this is a really pleasant place to chill with a cup of tea and a book.

This place definitely makes me miss being a student a little bit, sitting here in a big, deep comfy sofa opposite a group of students. One reading Plato’s Republic and looking a little pissed off by the other two animatedly talking about being «Cheese Fiends» and whether Feta is «Sheep’s Cheese». I’m not sure who I’d rather be in this situation, but I know whose going to be panicking in the morning of their finals… and it’s not the Plato girl. That is of course presuming that these two characters aren’t doing some obscure M.A. in Cheese Management or Dairy Studies?
But it’s not the everyday University scene that is the only reason I’m feeling nostalgic, but the general chilled atmosphere in this larger and open plan café. The café, which serves the needs of the cultural studies building is a bit more, well… cultured than the other café’s on campus with some African style art work and a more stylish, soft orange and yellow interior, not to mention the trump card; Sofa’s.
The food too is more on the healthy, soupy and worldly kind of vibe with the vegetable Mousakka and Spinach and sundried tomato Pie quiche catching the eye on today’s particular menu. If your doing cultural studies, which basically means you should be a hippy, your more likely to enjoy the atmosphere here than the utilitarian-​esque Hums or Bolthole café’s. Though of course there’s no on the door hippy policy, so come here anyway if your not and got some time to burn.