12/1/23
Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well and staying healthy as this fall semester wraps up! In this blog, I thought I’d write a little about the dining hall on campus, food options (especially for people with dietary restrictions), and a big update that came to the dining hall just this week. Please email me at sgoldsmith24@amherst.edu if you have any questions!
Valentine Hall Info and Hours
Our dining hall is called Valentine Hall, surely after someone who donated a lot of money to construct the building. Students refer to the dining hall just as Val, and it is a central meeting place on campus – about five minutes from both the Science Center and Frost Library. Val is open for continuous dining during the semester from 7:30 AM to 8:30 PM, but only serves hot food during meal times (7:30-10 for breakfast, 11:30-2 for lunch, and 5-8:30 for dinner). Val’s menu is available online, along with nutritional information. Val also serves food late at night (appropriately called Late Night) on Wednesdays and Thursdays, which is great for students looking for a late night snack. It used to be available more days of the week, and I’m certain that students are petitioning Val staff to get it back.
The Val staff are some of the nicest people on campus. They are so kind, and I love getting to talk to them every day when I get food.
Almost every student is on the full meal plan, which allows unlimited swipes into Val every day. There is an option where you can forgo your breakfast swipes in exchange for $100 in campus cash to spend at the cafes in the Science Center and library, but I personally think this is a scam – if you do the math, and divide the cost of the meal plan by 3 to get the cost of breakfast, it is worth much more than $100.
Eating with dietary restrictions
As a vegetarian (and someone who is coming to terms with their lactose intolerance), I am very aware of the availability of foods for people with dietary restrictions at Val. At every meal, there are at least two meat hot options and one vegan hot option, along with gluten free options and sides. There is always pasta with marinara sauce and a rotating sauce, rice, vegan and regular pizza, a salad bar, and a panini station. All this being said, I still find myself struggling with the lack of variety of vegetarian meals at Val. The hot vegetarian meal option is usually just tofu with some sort of sauce, which you can’t eat every single day. I usually end up having salad for lunch most days, and pasta or rice with veggies for dinner. I wish there were more vegetarian variety, and that the vegetarian meals were prepared with more intention. I think they are working on it.
Bagels
Lastly, in huge news, Val brought back Tandem bagels each weekend starting this weekend! Tandem is a bakery near us that makes great bagels, and Val used to serve them every Saturday and Sunday. This semester, they decided to phase out Tandem in exchange for cheaper bagels every day of the week that they thought would be better than the normal, mid-week prepackaged bagels we eat. They were not better. Students rebelled, vocally. And this week they announced Tandem is back every weekend. I can’t wait to eat my everything bagel tomorrow.