Affordable, good food within walking distance of the Yale campus:
Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napolitana on Wooster Street remains the best pizza I have ever tasted (and I have tasted a lot of pizza), and it is regularly called out as the best pizza in the world by various food and travel writers. It’s a very modest hike on foot from the Yale campus (about 2/3 mile from Phelps Gate) through downtown New Haven, but absolutely worth it. My wife and I, both Yale alumni, only rarely visit Yale itself these days, but we hardly ever drive past New Haven without stopping at Pepe’s. Try the fresh clam pizza, no kidding. If the weather is nice, call ahead, get a pizza to take out, and eat it in lovely Wooster Square, a block away. It’s crazy to visit New Haven and to miss the absolute best it has to offer.
Not off the beaten path at all, more like right on the beaten path, but excellent nonetheless: Claire’s Cornercopia, a vegetarian restaurant right across Chapel Street from Welch Hall and the Old Campus. Good, not fancy; really excellent value.
Nostalgia, at least for me: For a huge portion of my senior year, there was a blue-collar strike that shut down the dining halls and forced us out into the real world for food on very, very limited budgets. I probably ate half of my meals at Mamoun’s Falafel, on Howe Street (next to what is now a big parking garage), which back then had just opened its doors. (The Yale strike probably made that place.) It wasn’t my first falafel ever – that had come in NYC a few months earlier – but it seemed pretty exotic at the time. I have only been there once in the past 37 years, but it still hit the spot.
Heard about, not tried: Rudy’s (formerly THE college dive bar, now in a spiffy new building and serving Belgian frites), Caseus (cheese-centric restaurant out past Timothy Dwight), Cafe Romeo (nice-looking spot in a neighborhood with lots of grad students).