In the past food from the Cougar Café was like the fare of many other school cafeterias: students complained about it. In 2014, Clackamas Community College surveyed staff and students, who asked for better food on campus. Now due to a change in food service providers the Cougar Café has been revived. Over the summer Trio Hospitality became the new big cheese of the café.

I never ate in the old Cougar Café, but the new one seems to be on the right track. Now a huge variety of food, includes some packaged and premade foods and salads.

A small group and I from the Clackamas Print decided to sit down and sample a wide variety of the options available in the revamped cafeteria.

They have nearly anything you want from a Protein Box to an Elvis Burger, and they even have pizza provided by the Pizza Schmizza.

Neither of the premade salads we sampled were all that great. The Asian Noodle Chicken Salad tasted bland but its way better if you add sriracha. The chicken in the Southwest Chicken Salad was pretty good but adding a good flavorful dressing would make the salad perfect.

The selection of burgers is not disappointing in the least. Along with a build your own burger checklist, they also feature special burgers such as the Elvis Burger, which comes with pickles, bacon and peanut butter. We sampled the Trio Burger, with Swiss cheese, arugula and caramelized onions with the hemp patty. “It’s vegetarian wonderfulness,” said Matt Rowning. The Elvis Burger is super messy but the bacon is crispy and delicious.

For those of you who don’t eat, or like, meat there are also several options available to you. The Greek Veggie pizza is crispy and delicious, topped with tomatoes and olives. Also, any burger can have the meat patty replaced with a hemp seed patty at no extra charge.

As for dessert, our favorite item was the parfait.

“I would come back just for this,” said Megan McCoy. I know that I’ll be spending many lunches in the updated Cougar Café and that I won’t be disappointed.