The CoHo now serves halal chicken and pepperoni in hopes of creating a more accessible menu
By Khadeejah Khan — campus@theaggie.org
This fall quarter, the ASUCD Executive Office announced that all chicken and pepperoni at Ciao’s Pizzeria served at the Memorial Union Coffee House (CoHo) is halal.
While the transition to halal meat initially began last year, the CoHo did not publicly announce the change until recently to guarantee a complete transition to halal meat. Now, with the official ASUCD announcement, the CoHo’s goal is to make food more accessible to students with different dietary needs.
“We didn’t want to announce it at the time, because there were a lot of bridges to gap,” Ryan DeGuzman, the executive chef of the CoHo, said. “I wanted to make sure that if we were going to do halal that all our offerings would be able to be transitioned to halal.”
For DeGuzman, food symbolizes comfort. As executive chef, he aspires to bring the comfort of home-cooked meals to dining spots like the CoHo for all students.
“There’s a lot of kids who are so homesick here,” DeGuzman said. “When you’re homesick, you want something that is from your own culture or quenches that thirst for being at home. Adding the halal offerings kind of helps bridge that.”
The response from the Davis Muslim community has been overwhelmingly positive after the public announcement, according to DeGuzman, who also noted that the CoHo seems to now draw in larger crowds.
Nur Ambaw, a fourth-year political science major and president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), expressed his appreciation for the switch.
“Islam is a way of life, along with being a religion, and so it boils down to what we eat in a day,” Ambaw said. “Having this option allows us to explore so many more cuisines that we might not have been able to, especially people’s favorite like pepperoni.”
For Sabahat Nabiha, a fourth-year public service major and external vice president of the MSA, the menu change is a major step toward inclusion and accessibility on campus.
“In high school, I didn’t really have that many halal options, so I never really felt seen or visible,” Nabiha said. “I think that halal food does mean that the university is seeing us, that we’re being seen, that we matter and our religion and our beliefs are valued.”
The menu change has positively impacted Muslim students on campus, especially international students who come from countries where halal food is widely accessible, according to Nabiha.
“When you have students not only coming from different states [and] different backgrounds, but you’re also having students that come from all over the world, and a lot of them are coming from Muslim countries where all they have around them is halal food, so they never have to question ‘is this thing halal?’” Nabiha said.
When it comes to expanding the CoHo’s menu, DeGuzman believes that this change is just the start. He calls for students and faculty to share recipes they want to see added to the menu.
“If one person likes a recipe, there’s definitely going to be a lot more people behind them in line,” DeGuzman said. “The future of the Coffee House really depends on the students.”
Ambaw is grateful for the increased halal offerings and is optimistic about what the future holds when it comes to accessibility and inclusion on campus. As a former senator, Ambaw hopes that this change can lead to more decisions that impact student life.
“I hope this is just a start of the connection and the relationship between ASUCD and accommodating identity[-based] groups on campus, because it’s a direct impact,” Ambaw said. “When I was on the senate table last year, the biggest topic was, ‘How do we impact students?’ This is how we do it.”
Written by: Khadeejah Khan — campus@theaggie.org
