With a ceremonial cracking of an egg, the Kugel Family Station for Omelet Excellence opened for business.
Nourishing both the body and the mind, this is no ordinary omelet station. Situated in the Yahentamitsi dining hall at the University of Maryland, the eatery is part of an endowed scholarship program that benefits students working in the university’s dining halls.
Jeremy Kugel and his family are funding that scholarship. Kugel, who also works at the university, wanted to help students who may need extra cash to pay for expenses.
“It’s challenging. There are a lot of challenging things about being in school. [With] your studies and all the things you need to do,” he said. “A lot of these students are also working to pay for their tuition bills, which as you know, is a challenge and so we wanted to be able to help them out a little bit.”
“They’re studying; they’re doing their extracurriculars; they’re working here, so we wanted to make it a little bit easier for them to pay for school,” he said.
Preference for the scholarship will go to students who have special dietary needs or food allergies — a nod to Judy Kugel, Jeremy’s mother.
Judy can’t eat gluten, making an omelet eatery perfect.
“Twenty-five years ago when I first found out that I couldn’t eat gluten, it was really painful. I mean, I would travel with a jar of peanut butter, and now everybody knows about it,” she said. “So things have changed and that’s all for the good.”
Bodhi Getsug, a UMD senior who works in the dining hall, knows firsthand how a scholarship like this can help.
“The money I’ve made here has gone both towards tuition, helping myself and my parents pay for my education and my expenses, and the scholarship that I received recently has definitely helped me a lot and my parents, and we appreciate it,” Getsug said.
Sitting above the griddle is a plaque that reads “l’oeuf is love,” French for “the egg is love.”
Students say they love the omelets.
“It’s pretty good,” said a student who’d gotten an omelet with ham, onions, peppers and cheese.
“I feel like for a college dining hall, it’s definitely up there,” he said. “I don’t think many other campuses have something this high-quality. So come to UMD for the omelets.”
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