Q: What should I know before sending my son/daughter/self to Kenyon College?

I didn't have time for T.A.M.S.Y. today, but since about 50% of my readers are coming via search engines, here's something for those of you who might be researching Kenyon College, on the eve of freshman freshperson orientation weekend.

A guide to nourishment -- gastronomical & educational -- in Gambier, OH

Last week, I received the following email from my housemate:

Hey Dean,

One of my co-workers has a daughter starting at Kenyon in a week. She's pretty excited. The family is driving down early next week and wanted to know where the good restaurants are. I told him I had roommates who would know all the secrets. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
B-Giddy

A: Sure I have some suggestions! Kenyon is one of my favorite places in the world, so I'm happy to provide some tips:

(If you want to skip ahead to the notes on some of the best classes for first-year students, click here.)

Tell your coworker that his best bet, as far as fine dining goes, is... well, sending his daughter to a different college.

No, but seriously: Kenyon is a wonderful place, and she'll love her time there; but as superb as the education and people and atmosphere and natural beauty and camaraderie are, the outside dining options are limited -- depending on how far you're willing to drive.

Probably their best bet is the Kenyon Inn itself, which is an intimate, fancyish dining room in the campus' intimate, fancyish hotel. They'll probably need to make reservations, though, if they want to eat there next week, as the place gets very busy any time parents are in town.

As for Mount Vernon, well, I don't think there actually *is* fine dining in Mount Vernon (unless you count The Alcove, which is fine but not quite fine).

The student favorite is a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall a couple miles out of Gambier, Hunan Garden (just "Hunan" to the locals). It's nothing special, but it's clean, it's consistently delicious, and it's hosted some of my fondest memories. I hope your co-worker's daughter enjoys Chinese food, as she should expect to spend approximately 300 hours eating it over the next four years.

The area around that strip mall was undergoing constant development while I was there, and although most of it involved chain restaurants (Ruby Tuesdays, etc), there may be some decent places that have sprung up over the two years since I've been there. Generally speaking, though, the locally run eateries are an iffy proposition.

The R&M Southside Diner is very decent for breakfast/brunch. It's not exactly the Ritz, but the food's good. Try the special; I can't remember what it's called, but it's the one that was featured in Country Living.

Columbus' dining scene, on the other hand, is extensive and underrated, and it's worth checking out if you have the time to drive there (it's about an hour and 15 minutes away). Off the top of my head: I'd very highly recommend Haiku, if they enjoy sushi/Japanese cuisine. It really is among the better sushi restaurants I've been to in the country, and I LOVE sushi.

Also worthy of note is the empire of restauranteur Cameron Mitchell. The best way to find a Cameron Mitchell restaurant in Columbus is, you park your car anywhere, walk ten paces north, and you will be at a Cameron Mitchell restaurant. Note that it also works if you walk ten paces south, east, or west, because he owns approximately 40,000 restaurants.

In my experience, all of them are pretty good, but I have a particular fondness for a place called Martini's (from which I stole my famous recipe for salad dressing, shhhh).

My final recommendation is that, at some point over the next four years, it's worth spending at least one weekend at the Gambier House, the quaint on-campus bed-and-breakfast. It's an awesome little house full of wonderfully weird rooms ( e.g., "the drawer room," of which one wall is entirely drawers).

Although it's no longer run by the lovely French-Canadians who owned it in my day (1998-2003, for the record), my guess is that it's still wonderful and worth checking out. The only thing to keep in mind is that it usually requires an advance reservation, because of its size and popularity.

Alright, that's everything that comes to mind. Hope it helps.

By the way, not that they asked, but the best advice I could give to any incoming freshman (and that I wish had been given to me) is this:

The most important decisions you make, over the next few weeks, will almost certainly be in regards to the classes you choose; and more specifically, in regards to the professors you choose.

Kenyon's top professors -- there are certainly many very good ones -- are, as far as I'm concerned, as good as those of any school in the country (suck it, Ivy League), but there are also those whose reputation far outweighs their actual excellence... and those who have made a career of boring first-years into an academic coma.

Off the top of my head, though, some classes worth sampling are:

• Intro to American Studies with Peter Rutkoff
• Intro to Religion with Vernon Schubel
• Intro to Drama with playwright Wendy MacLeod (the drama department, by the way, is among the best in the country, if not the best, and you need not be an actor/actress to take a lot from them)
  
• Any English class that involves Perry Lentz or author P.F. Kluge (both of whom themselves graduated from Kenyon in '64 -- it was apparently a good year)
  
• Quest for Justice (i.e., intro to political science) with Fred Baumann.
  

Okay, I am going to stop ranting and raving now. Sorry for running long here, but it's been a while since I've had a chance to talk about the world 'o Gambier, OH. Hope the advice comes in handy, and pass along my congrats to his daughter for her excellent choice in colleges.

NOTE: If you're a current or former Kenyon student, and want to supplement the above with your own insights, please leave 'em in the comments below.

Also feel free to toss me any specific questions or comments to dean DOT simakis AT gmail.