The Bon Appétit Guide to College Dining Scenes, from Food Trucks to Farmers' Markets
Attention, high school seniors! It's decision time. You've (hopefully) gotten some acceptance letters in the mail, and now you get to choose where to spend the best <del>six</del> four years of your life. There are so many factors to weigh: Are the dorms "like palaces"? Is the dating culture whack? Oh, and let's hope there are esteemed professors with whom you would like to pursue myriad research opportunities and expand your mind. But if you're like us, all important decisions are rooted in Socrates' timeless query: What's for dinner? Let us help you make the most important decision of your life, whether you're a food politico, a locavore, or if you just really, really like ice cream.
Bowdoin Gourmet1/16For the Casual Hedonist: Bowdoin College
Some colleges do ice cream socials. At Bowdoin in Brunswick, Maine, there's a full-fledged lobster bake to welcome students back to school. Cost of attendance is "market price," but you can bet it's cheaper than a lobster dinner just about anywhere else. And the rest of the year, the dining hall has freshly squeezed orange juice, homemade muffins, and an egg sandwich so good that the sister of this writer felt the need to live-text the process of eating it during every Sunday brunch.
Yelp2/16For the Food Trucker: Duke
Lots of college students can frequent the late-night food trucks that haunt campus streets. But only Duke students can consult a Google Calendar to find out when their mobile dinner of choice will roll on by. Find time for pulled pork from Humble Pig; fries with feta from Gussy's (pictured); crêpes with homemade lemon curd from Parlez-Vous Crêpe; pork and scallion dumplings from Chirba Chirba; stone-ground cheddar grits from Fosters on the Fly; Baguetteaboutit's hot Italian sausage on a fresh baked baguette... Hmmm, maybe I will go get that master's, after all.
Oregon State U.3/16For the Pre-Professional Farmer: Oregon State
More and more colleges are incorporating their own farms into student life, but the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University is the one tugging at our pastoral heartstrings. On hundreds of acres abutting a National Forest, the school's research farmland is dedicated to important and fascinating things like wheat pathology, hazelnut harvests, and developing a purple tomato. The place is quite literally flowing with milk and honey—and there's wine, too.
Facebook / COFGA4/16For the Dedicated Amateur Farmer: Colby College
Maybe you're not majoring in soil sciences, but if you want to combine liberal arts with farming arts, you can get down and dirty on Colby College's 2 Feet 2 Bedrock student farm in Waterville, Maine—and later that day, eat the same kale, corn, blueberries, peaches, basil, tomatoes, and other fruits and veg that you harvested when you head to dinner at Colby's dining hall.
Joe Mabel, Wikicommons5/16The Vegan Activist: Wesleyan
Wesleyan couldn't be crowned most vegan-friendly small college by PETA in 2012 without also spurring student-helmed conspiracy theories and investigations into the validity of those claims. Apparently there was bribery involved!? So, if you're vegan and/or dedicated to the pursuit of truth and justice, this just might be the school for you. The PETA battle was head-to-head with Oberlin, but the runner-up is pretty much the same school, anyway.
Marcus Nilsson6/16The Surfer Vegan: UCSD
The University of California–San Diego has an all-vegan eatery right on campus, and even to this die-hard omnivore, Roots looks pretty good. Any student so inclined can feel free to juice away their four years with smoothies and "chiken" sandwiches, in between taking a surfboard past the library and down to the beach.
Warren Wilson College7/16For the Freegan: Warren Wilson College
If your dietary restrictions hinge on whether something actually costs money, then enroll in Warren Wilson, in Asheville, N.C., which in addition to dining halls and other lame things you have to pay for has a free store, where you can help yourself to discarded canned foods and all sorts of one-time-trash-now-your-treasures.
Brown Market Shares Program8/16For the Crunchy Granolist: Brown University
And when I say crunchy granola, I mean actual really good granola from the Providence Granola Project that once appeared as part of this alumna's student-run CSA-style market share. That, and fresh-baked olive loaves from Seven Stars Bakery, salty feta from Narragansett Creamery, and Thanksgiving turkey from Baffoni's Poultry Farm. And that's not even including the produce. Rhode Island is the little state that can when it comes to local foods, and Brown does its part. And while the writer of this story cooked most of her meals on a hot plate in her dorm, rumor has it that local food is used in the dining hall, as well. Point being, at a school where Frat Row is frequented more for the weekly farmers' market than for those Saturday evening gatherings that vaguely resemble parties, you don't need to look far for really tasty granola.
Grinnell College9/16For Future Institutional Chefs: Grinnell College
You don't just eat in the dining hall. You want to run the dining hall someday. Grinnell College in Iowa has its own pre-professional intern program for students who want to work in university dining management. If institutional dining is where you aspire to be, spend the summer immersed in the cafeteria arts; making lobster strudel with chef Scott Turley is a far cry from microwaving ramen.
10/16For Carnivorous Cowboys and Cowgirls: Texas A&M State U.
Students in the Animal Science department at Texas A&M have the opportunity to join the Saddle and Sirloin Club—like a Princeton Eating Club, only with more meat. Members attend the Cattleman's Ball, trim hams in the annual Ham Trimming contest, and presumably snack on a lot of Texas Aggie brand beef jerky, made from lean top round in the Animal Science 307 lab. That's our kind of science project.
College of the Atlantic11/16For the Human Ecologist: College of the Atlantic
There is only one major for the fewer than 400 students who attend the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine: Human Ecology. Which means whether you like it or not, you'll be eating apples from the school's own root cellar, digging for oysters off Mount Desert Island, and buying fresh yogurt from a vending machine in a campus café called the Sea Urchin. But if you're going here, it's probably precisely because you like that kind of thing. (We like that kind of thing, too!)
© Bob Pardue - Signs / Alamy12/16For the Fast Food Junkie: Florida State U.
Why use the dining hall when FSU students can spend Flex Bucks on chicken sammies at Chick-Fil-A? Plus, there's Starbucks, Chili's, Papa John's, Subway, Einstein Bros., and an all-night Denny's, and Waffle House and Gumby's aren't far off. Score.
Brooklyn Flea13/16For the Food: NYU
You come to NYU for the food—for NYU's food, that is. So what if the dining halls are nothing to write home about? This is one of the greatest food cities in the world (we live here; we can say that). Smorgasburg is your dining hall. Five-for-a-dollar dumplings in Chinatown are your working lunch. And for when your parents are in town, there's this. Or maybe you're here for Steinhardt's Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, where food politics guru Marion Nestle has Alice Waters, Monsanto, and, well, herself, on her syllabus. And if all that isn't enough, there's aways the much-sought-after Chick-Fil-A tucked in the basement of a University Place dorm.
Harvard14/16For the Molecular Gastronomist: Harvard
Fulfill the science requirement at Harvard and win the envy of every food-science nerd by enrolling in the university's renowned "science" class, "Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter," taught by the likes of David Chang, Harold McGee, and other food-world VIPS—because nothing whets the appetite like a little catalytic conversion (seriously, it's not just for cars).
Penn State University Press15/16For the Ice Cream Entrepreneur: Penn State
Every January during winter break, Penn State's College of Agricultural Science runs a short course in ice cream making, the be-all-end-all in ice cream ed. The seven-day workshop draws aspiring ice cream makers from across the globe who want to learn about milk composition, freezing techniques—basically everything you didn't know you didn't know about frozen desserts. The short course is geared toward professionals, but having an ice cream school on campus definitely means good vibes. The college also has its own creamery, which sells pints of Alumni Swirl and various cheeses, both at school and online.
Wikicommons16/16For the Staycationer: Kapi'olani Community College
The farmers' market at Kapi'olani Community College on Oahu is a veritable tourist destination. It's like any great farmers' market—except here, local bounty includes sea asparagus, papaya, apple bananas, taro chips, coffee, macadamia nuts, and glorious pink salt. Plus, if you're a student, consider the guava-smoked pork and taro mochi worthy supplements to (or, more likely, replacements for) your meal plan. Don't forget to grab a cold-pressed papaya juice before heading out to go diving in an undiscovered natural waterfall or whatever. (No, we're not jealous, not at all...)
