The best college food in America
UMass Amherst: The Nation’s No. 1 College Dining Hall
Pricing & Overview
• The Cost: $17 for lunch, and $20 for dinner—although the school doesn’t advertise that.
• The Scale: On any given day, students can access four dining halls, a full-service restaurant, food trucks, and more than 30 cafes and markets.
• The Menu: At Worcester Commons, the university’s largest and busiest dining hall, the daily rotation includes a Mediterranean station, an Indian tandoor, hand-rolled sushi, noodle bowls, and pizza.
• “If you know, you know,” said Alexander Ong, the school’s director of culinary excellence whose resume includes the Ritz-Carlton and Shangri-La hotels.
The Student Experience
• Around 87% of students are on a meal plan—a figure that places UMass Amherst in the top 1% of schools nationwide. Students pay about $3,600 to $4,200 a semester for residential dining plans.
• “The freshman 15 here is definitely, definitely a thing,” said John Ferrarelli, a senior from Weymouth, Mass. “Because you just try everything.”
• “We’re aware that even if we served caviar every day, they’d get tired of it,” said Garett DiStefano, director of dining services.
Special Events & Local Ingredients
Since 2017, UMass Amherst has been rated No. 1 for campus food in the country. The dining halls host about 60 special events a year, going all-out for celebrations like the Super Bowl and Diwali.
• Halloween Steak & Lobster Dinner: The lobsters—all 15,000 of them—take an early-morning journey by truck from the Gulf of Maine to Amherst.
• “The lines will be out of the door,” said Malcolm Clark, a sophomore from Boston. “I’m talking hundreds of feet out of the door. Because it’s a lobster.”
• Guest Chefs: Last month, James Beard Award-winning chef Ricky Moore curated a Southern- and Caribbean-inspired menu featuring Swahili coconut chicken and lemon icebox cake.
• “My first job was a paratrooper,” Moore said, “and I like to tell people I landed in the kitchen.”
• Farm-to-Campus Sourcing: About 20% of ingredients are locally sourced from an annual purchasing budget exceeding $40 million. A fan favorite is the chocolate milk from Jersey cows on Mapleline Farm, about 2 miles from campus.
• “You always see gym bros coming back from the gym with, like, two glasses of chocolate milk and then chicken and rice,” said Cleo Conway, a sophomore from Rye, N.H.
A Local and Family Destination
To locals, the university dining hall is the No. 1 buffet in town.
• Family Visits: Ana McGuire drives 40 minutes every Friday to have dinner with her son at Berkshire Dining Commons. As a UMass parent, she eats for free.
• “He says, ‘Mom, I’m sorry. I love you so much, but I miss the food,’” she said. “No offense taken. I want to go, too.”
• A Treat for Kids: Tamara Bowman regularly takes her children to lunch at Worcester Commons. Her son goes for fries and chicken nuggets, while her daughter hits the pasta station.
• “If there’s any chance coming up, my kids will be like, ‘OK, I’m not gonna have breakfast that day. I can’t wait to go to the dining hall,’” Bowman said. “I really like that you can make a salad and put pickles in it. Because where else can you do that?”
• Community Nostalgia: Kanyinsola Okuwobi grew up eating at the university with her family after church on Sundays. Now a freshman, she enjoyed their Lunar New Year spread of wontons, spring rolls, and orange chicken after being relocated due to a flooded dorm.
• “It was amazing,” she said. “I kind of forgot about my problems for a moment."
