<p>I'm wondering about something that isn't adressed NEARLY enough on these threads: how is the food at MIT? Input fron students and/or people who have eaten on campus would be greatly appreciated. Are there many dining halls? Is there a varie of food? Is it good? Is it healthy?</p>
<p>As a male teenage student this is of grave importance to me</p>
<p>I live in a non-dining dorm. We have ginormous kitchens on every floor that are shared between 13-ish people and a grocery store less than a block away. Sometimes I cook, sometimes my boyfriend cooks, and sometimes I live off of cereal (mmm cereal) and couscous and beef franks. I order out about twice a semester when life gets rough, and our dorm feeds us amazing huge dinners evenings before finals and for study breaks every few weeks. Random Hall is also very close to Central Square, which is covered in a gazillion amazing restaurants that I haven’t bothered to explore yet. Except Cafe Luna, which lets you color their tablecloths with crayons. <3 Cafe Luna.</p>
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There are, but not everybody eats in them very often. Some dorms have dining halls and others don’t; if you live in a non-dining hall dorm, you can go to another dorm with a dining hall for dinner if you want. Often non-dining hall dorms have good kitchen facilities, and people who live in them frequently cook for themselves a lot, which has the advantage of being exactly as healthy and good as you want it to be. </p>
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Yes, definitely. There are a lot of restaurants on and around campus, and most/all of them accept Tech Cash, which is the MIT dining currency. There are also several food trucks that park on campus during the day. I’m not going to say you’ll never get bored at lunch, because your lunch options end up being restricted by where your classes are and how much time you have for lunch, but there are a lot of options.</p>
<p>Personally speaking, I ate lunch on campus (restaurant/cafeteria/food truck) every day, and cooked for myself most nights. I ordered in a lot more often than lidusha, though. :)</p>
<p>I live in EC, so I cook for myself most of the time. Shaw’s is a bike ride away and as long as I’m good about planning out what I want to cook for the week, I’m normally fine. There are tons of restaurants around MIT, I normally go out once a week or so with friends. Stressful weeks I might grab food from Kendall Square foodcourt. I’ve eaten in most of the dining halls at least once. They’re okay. You can eat healthily if you are conscious about it, but as a bit of a picky eater, sometimes the healthy options aren’t really something I want to eat. Maseeh’s the only dining hall open for lunch at this point and most of the time I find myself eating unhealthily there. If you know how to cook, it really is more economically feasible and healthier because you can choose what you’re eating. Also, you get to choose when you eat.</p>
<p>I live in a dining hall dorm (mandatory meal plan), and the meal plan is not particularly great. I like where I live and I don’t want to move, so I’m stuck with dining hall food, whichl isn’t particularly appetizing. Though you should take that with a grain of salt because I’m a vegetarian and I think the non-veg options are better (though still I don’t know anyone who is really fond of dining food). Then again, I don’t know if I’d be a particularly great cook either, and the food is passable most of the time. The minimum mandatory meal plan only covers breakfast and dinner, so you’re free to do whatever you want for lunch if you live in a dining hall dorm unless you live in Maseeh. I have terrible lunch habits (I mostly don’t eat it), so I can’t really tell you much about that. Though, I’ve grabbed something from Clover (a food truck) a few times and that’s pretty delicious.</p>
<p>The food in my dining hall is relatively healthy, especially compared to certain other ones (<em>cough</em> Baker <em>cough</em>). I think if you want to eat healthy, you’ll find healthy options. Also, you can eat at whatever dorm you want. I think that unless you have dietary restrictions, there’s a good amount of variety in dining hall food.</p>
<p>Echoing what wellthatsokay said, the food at my dining hall (the same one wellthatsokay is in) is very bad. I like to eat meat and there are usually very little choices. On some days they don’t have any meat dishes except the standard hamburger patties and fried chicken patties. On top of that, every freshman in our particular dorm has to buy a 19-meal plan, which means we have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the dining hall or we waste our money. The plan for the whole year comes out to almost $5000, which I think is kind of ridiculous, but I can’t do anything about it.</p>
<p>But people don’t come to MIT to experience good food right? ;)</p>
<p>If you live in a mandatory meal-plan house, can you go to a different dining hall and use your meal plan money there instead?</p>
<p>^ Yes, your meal plan is valid at any of the dining halls.</p>
<p>My son is in a mandatory dining hall dorm. The first couple months (he’s a freshman) he really loved the food and ate every meal there. However, the last I’d talked to him over the last month or so, he’s really getting tired of the choices. He’s actually very excited for IAP (January “free time” at MIT) since his dorm doesn’t have the meal plan then and he can try to experience some of the other options at MIT, as well as cooking for himself. He loves the dorm though and won’t change just because he has to have the dining plan - when he’s really busy, he’s glad he doesn’t have to worry about making meals. So there are pros and cons to everything. But the overall consensus from him and his friends is that the food is just “eh”.</p>
<p>^ That’s basically my boat, except I love another dorm and got into it for spring term :)</p>
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And relatively healthy, too! (Or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. They have a Clover restaurant up in Harvard Square, mere blocks from my lab, and I eat there all the time. :))</p>
<p>I think I’ve eaten Clover at least twice a week for the past semester.</p>
<p>if you mainly cook for yourself, about how often do you have to buy groceries, where do you buy them and about how much do you spend?</p>
<p>^ That depends on what / how much you eat. Freshman year, I ate a lot of pasta and ramen and spent probably $15 - $20/week on food. Now I probably spend $50/week on food and eat significantly better. There’s a grocery store next to Random Hall called “Star Market”, and there is also a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods relatively nearby.</p>
<p>I buy groceries at Shaw’s, which is a block away from my dorm. Most people aren’t so close, though. I buy groceries anywhere from twice a week to once every two weeks, depending on how my week is going and what I’m eating and how much cereal I have saved up. I spend anywhere from $30 to $80 on grocery trips.</p>
<p>How much you spend and how often you go depends entirely on your preferences, and were you go depends on your dorm.</p>
<p>(Shaw’s and Star Market are the same store.)</p>
<p>How many of the dorms have manditory meal plans and how many have their own kitchens?</p>
<p>Dorms that require you to enroll in a meal plan:
Baker House (W7)
Maseeh Hall (W1)
McCormick Hall (W4)
Next House (W71)
Simmons Hall (W79)</p>
<p>Dorms that don’t require you to enroll in a meal plan:
Bexley Hall (W13)
Burton-Conner House (W51)
East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing (Buildings 62 and 64)
MacGregor House (W61)
New House (W70)
Random Hall (NW61)
Senior House (E2)</p>
<p>For more information about meal plans: [Enroll</a> in a Meal Plan | MIT Campus Dining](<a href=“Dining | Division of Student Life”>Dining | Division of Student Life)</p>
<p>Regarding kitchens, from what I know:</p>
<p>Baker: no kitchens on each floor, one communal kitchen
Maseeh: ditto baker
McCormick: has kitchens on every floor
I’m not 100% on Next and Simmons, but I want to say they also have only one communal kitchen - someone please correct me if I’m wrong</p>
<p>I think all of the non-dining hall dorms have at least one kitchen on each floor (for some of them I think it’s per suite). Again, someone else please correct me if this isn’t true.</p>
<p>Thought my son had said that Simmons had one “real” common kitchen and small ones on each floor (probably microwaves and things like that). I can ask him when I see him tomorrow night!</p>