You might have been told not to play with your food while growing up, but LSU Dining is switching things with their new YouTube series “Hack the Hall.” 
LSU Dining has cooked up humor-filled episodes to help students  make the most of their dining hall experience.  
The series is set at “The 5” and stars Executive Chef Laurence Landon. Landon walks students through making creative dishes using the ingredients available to them at the dining halls. From double stuffed quesadillas to jalapeño and ham mac n’ cheese, “Hack the Hall” proves there is no limit to how creative you can be with your food. 
Landon mentioned the pizza and grill stations are what most students gravitate towards at the dining hall, but this series pushes students to be more creative with their food choices and not feel scared to try new things. 
Although the series is videoed at The 5, Landon said all the ingredients uses in the videos can be found at any of the dining halls at the University. He even said most ingredients they use could probably be found in dining halls all throughout the country. 
Montana Anker, a marketing intern at The 5, said the idea for the YouTube series came after her and her fellow interns were collaborating about ways to make the dining hall more fun and interactive for students. 
“We have a lot of fun making them,” Anker said while explaining how relaxed and fun the environment is when they are filming the videos. 
The hacks can be done at any time of the day, but Landon said dinner is the optimal time to put these skills to the test. 
“Dinner is more laid back. Students aren’t on a time crunch, so they come in at their own leisure and they hang out a little bit more,” Landon said. “That’s really where the hacks come in, when they have a little bit more time to do their own thing.” 
However, if students are up to the challenge, most videos are only between one to two minutes long. Even if you’re crunched for time, you could whip out one of the hacks to liven up your experience. 
Anker and Landon expressed the goal of the video series is to get more students to interact and know that they can do so much more than they think at the dining halls. 
“We’re trying to get students to be more creative and think more about their food,” Anker said. “We want them to have fun and have a great experience at the dining hall. If we can create that for them through Hack the Hall, I think that’s a great thing.” 
Currently, Hack the Hall is exclusively for the University, but Anker mentioned she is working with other universities in hopes of expanding and reaching more students. 
There is a new “Hack the Hall’ video every Thursday on the LSU Dining YouTube channel.