<p>How does food at Caltech work? I know that houses eat dinner together but that's about all I know. Is there a school wide meal plan? Is it house by house basis? How do breakfast and lunch work? Etc. Thank you!</p>
<p>There is a school-wide meal plan (at least for those that live in the houses, as freshman almost always do). You get five dinners a week with your house, open kitchen (cereal and sandwiches and stuff) during the weekdays (in the morning and afternoon) and a certain amount of “declining balance” which you can use for food in the convenience store or the Chandler dining hall for lunch/breakfast/snacks. If you’re living on campus, the meal plan is mandatory.</p>
<p>Is the food there yummy? 
WashU’s food is wonderful and I’m sure the Freshman 15 is inevitable there. </p>
<p>Is there some type of grocery store near Caltech?</p>
<p>So I can’t speak for everybody, but I personally have always thought that the quality of food here is pretty good. As for groceries, if you can’t find what you want at the c-store and you don’t mind spending “real money” instead of your declining balance, there is a Pavilions and a Trader Joe’s in easy walking distance, and a Ralph’s just a bit farther beyond them (if you want to pull up your favorite map service online, you can see this a little more concretely–Caltech is essentially the rectangle bounded by California on the south, Del Mar on the north, Hill on the east, and Wilson on the west–Pavilions is roughly at the intersection of California and Lake (a major street west of Wilson), Trader Joe’s is roughly at the intersection of Del Mar and Lake, and Ralph’s is at the intersection of Walnut and Lake (northwest from campus).</p>
<p>As an aside, it is in fact possible to live solely on food from the board program at Caltech, though I think most people like eating off campus on weekends. This term, as a bit of a test for myself, I decided to cut back on spending by trying as much as possible to eat only on the board program, using mostly board dinner and open kitchen on weekdays and prepackaged c-store food on declining balance on the weekends. There are three days left in the term, and so far I’ve spent exactly $7.48 on food outside of the board program ($1.00 for a couple of cans of coke in the middle of the night from a vending machine when the C-store was closed, and $6.48 on a meal at Quizno’s during an off-campus social event)…and as far as I know, I’m not dead, so it can’t be too bad, right? =P</p>
<p>I don’t know how much the undergrads eat there, but Chandler definitely has better food than what I had to deal with at my undergrad school. Sadly prices are going up, so on days I feel too lazy to pack leftovers I hit the taco truck (and then it hits me back a few hours later :().</p>
<p>I love Chandler. And yes, Ernie’s (the taco truck) is pretty awesome too.</p>
<p>My son’s not wild about the food at the house meals, but he has always been a picky eater. I’ll ask him what he had and sometimes he is unable to identify it. He’s fine with the choices at Chandler, however. He always has a bunch of declining balance left and has to go spend it on junk at the C-store. If you can’t go home Thanksgiving, they give the houses some turkeys to cook themselves, which was probably his favorite thing he’s had there because he is kind of a meat and potatoes guy. He’s a big fan of pizza classes, and those plus his dislike of eating breakfast probably contribute to his large amount of declining balance left each term. Whoever stays with him at prefrosh will undoubtedly have a large amount of C-store junk food available to them.</p>
<p>Visited 2008 admit weekend - absolutely the worst food eaten at any college visited. and this was when parents were on campus. D also thought food served at the houses was also horrible. For being in CA, limited fresh, healthy food.</p>
<p>The food for lunch is typically fairly good, like at Chandler or otherwise. The food for dinner tends to suck though. Apparently, it used to be worse, and they try to improve it year by year, but change has been fairly gradual as far as I can tell. If you’re not picky, you should be fine most nights. If you’re a picky eater … well, you probably won’t be gaining your freshman 15 any time soon. There are other perks to the meal plan, such as open kitchen, where basically the kitchens are open between meal times, and you can eat breakfast food and fruit from the kitchen for free. But yeah, the food at dinner is one of the classic problems we complain about. The house style dinners are pretty fun though.</p>
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<p>If you were served by Caltech Catering that’s probably why. For some reason their food seems to be way below the quality they serve at Chandler and Broad Cafe. Not to worry, though, since catering was just recently disbanded.</p>
<p>Haha 
Some of these experiences don’t sound too hot, but at least there’s a grocery near by. Thanks for everyone’s input; I’ll try out the food at Prefrosh Weekend!</p>