The Establishment

Establishment is completely run by the Hotel students, who are taking an restaurant operation class. I have been pulled multiple times by friends that were the managers of the night, but only this semester I finally had a chance to go.
Although I agree that random, unpredictable accident can happen. For example, last time, I ordered a special entrée but were told that they ran out 20 minutes after ordering… when all my friends’ entrees were served. Haha, but the food was really good after all. I hope things like this don’t happen that often.
Besides some small accident, the food and service is comparable to a decent restaurant level if not better. It’s very easy to run into friends since most of the customers are Cornell students. For some reason, I found it fun randomly running into so many friends at a restaurant. Moreover, you don’t pay tips, which really saves a lot for such a nice dinner! =D

Monday night team went all out. Best Brussel sprout dish ever, caramelized with jaw-​droppingly creative topping. Perfect duck over farro, nice veg spaghetti, re-​created Napoleon pastry, even bombolino! Wonderful conceptions, excellent execution, great service.

The establishment is entirely student run and every night a new group of students takes over the restaurant to run their own dinner service. So each night there is a special appetizer and entrée that the student group came up with along with the regular menu. The regular menu features items like truffle fries, pizzas, a burger, pasta, duck, and salmon. They also recently built a mini restaurant on the 3^rd floor of Statler hall for the establishment so it is no longer located where terrace is during the day. It is actually a really nice place with a beautiful view of campus.
Now to the food — we shared the special appetizer and the truffle fries and then got the burger and the duck. The truffle fries and the burger were so darn good. The burger was cooked a perfect medium rare (which is actually very impressive here in Ithaca because the only other place I have ever had my burger a perfect medium rare was at Ithaca ale house), and is topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, BACON, cheddar cheese (or whipped blue if that’s your thing) and this fantastic aioli. It is also served with fries so like go ahead and double up on those because they are perfectly fried. I didn’t try the duck because it’s still a food that kind of skeeves me out, but my friend said it was delicious. I trust her duck loving opinion.
For my burger and a portion of the appetizers, it only cost me $ 19. So cheap! You also don’t tip because it’s a class (you literally are not allowed to tip) so you save a lot of money there too. I can’t speak to the consistency of the place because I’ve only been there once (and i would imagine that it changes based on who is running the show that night) but I have 0 complaints from my experience last night.

The Establishment is a restaurant in Statler Hotel on Cornell’s campus run entirely by hotel school students. This includes the food, which is also prepared by the same students.
Food quality: decent, definitely better than the average cook on campus but some novice mistakes were made in the cooking of our dishes. Bland pork chop, steaks not fully marinated or if they were they needed more seasoning. And portions could be a lot better.
Price: Food is too expensive for what you get (taste and portionwise), expect to spend around 15 for entrée pre-​tax/​tip, appetizer is around 6, and dessert around 5.
But hey if you are going here you are here to support the students in their experiments.