How's the dining situation at Brown?

ILoveBrown
Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:48:10 +0000

All rightee, here goes!

What other dining places are on campus, and who are they accessible to?

The other main dining hall is called Verney-Wolley, but we usually call it the V-Dub. It’s on the Pembroke campus and is a lot smaller than the Ratty. Generally, the V-Dub has fewer food choices, but they often have “better” food or more interesting special options (veggie stir fry, chinese food, etc). Anybody can go to the V-Dub, although its hours are a little more limited than the Ratty’s (it’s not open on weekends).

Josiah’s, the Ivy Room, and the Gate are three places to get different kinds of meals on campus. You can spend your “flex points” there, or spend meal credits (our meal plan is pretty complicated so I won’t even try to explain it unless you want me to). They all have different hours and have different kinds of food. Josiah’s (Joe’s for short) has sandwiches, wraps, and stir fries, as well as lots of different kinds of healthy and junk snack foods, juices, teas, fruits, veggies, etc. The Ivy Room has smoothies, ice cream, pizza, wraps, falafel, a burrito bar, and snacks. The Gate has pizza, sandwhiches, and snacks.

The Campus Market and Little Joe’s (right by Josiah’s) are more like convenience stores, with mostly snack foods and drinks as well as college survival items (notebooks etc).

There are also a number of places on campus to get coffee and juice and basic snacks. The Blue Room is where a lot of people go for coffee, but there are also various places in the libraries (the Rock, the SciLi, the CIT, etc) to get a quick bite to eat or some coffee for all-night research papers.

How early does the dining hall open for breakfast?
Hours of the various dining halls are here: http://www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Food_Services/

How do the kitchens in the dorms work? (I’m just wondering who gets kitchens in the dorms, and how expensive is it to cook for yourself as opposed to eating at the school.)

Each dorm has a different situation, but I think all the freshmen dorms have kitchens that you can use any time. Most freshmen are on a meal plan so they don’t have to cook for themselves much, but I often make myself pasta or bake cookies with my friends in our kitchen. They’re not too fancy, but they’ll do. Some people do most of their own cooking, but usually you wouldn’t do this as a freshman. I’m not sure how expensive it is, but probably more (if you want to eat well) and less convenient than the meal plan.

How are the dorms at Brown? (Large, claustrophobic, poorly/well heated, etc.) Is it worse for freshmen, sophomores than upperclassmen?

There are a lot of different dorms, and each one has its own “personality,” so to speak. There are a lot of other threads on this board about this, so I won’t spend too much time on it. Let’s just say if you had your heart set on the luxury dorms at Harvard or Yale, you’ll be a little let down here. But generally the dorms are nice. There are big dorms and small dorms, dorms close to everything and dorms far away. There are also a lot of ways to get out of the dorm system but still live on campus – join a special house (international house, tech house, etc), join a frat, live in a co-op, etc. There are more options for upperclassmen than for freshmen, and sometimes sophomores complain that they get the short end of the stick in the housing lottery, but this is the case in many schools and it depends whom you ask.

Hope that helps! Time to run off to class…