The Refectory

If you can't tell by the regularity with which we post on food-related things, food is particularly important to us individually and to YDS as a whole. We've covered where to buy groceries and some restaurants to buy food, but we have yet to talk about YDS's own offering: the Refectory. A "refectory" is not some sort of skin disease, but a name for a dining hall in religious communities (monasteries, boarding schools, and other academic institutions, like seminaries and divinity schools.)

The Refectory is located on the second floor of the Div School between the Common Room and Marquand Chapel. (Take an interactive tour here.) It opens for a continental, limited hot breakfast from 7:30-11:00am, when it transitions to lunch. There are also three selections of coffee: two caffeinated options (usually one dark roast and one medium roast), and decaf.

For lunch, there are several options for food:

• Hot entrée: Everyday there is an entrée in veggie and meat-eater varieties, on a two-week rotation. These include everything from sloppy joes to chicken tikka masala and saag paneer to stuffed shells. 
• Salad bar: One of the lovely women who run the Refectory, Julia, puts together the salad bar every morning. It has a wide array of options for vegetables and meat to adorn your mesclun, iceberg, romaine, or spinach. And if you ask nicely, Julia will often take requests for things to include. She is always extremely delighted when she hears someone enjoying what she spends so much time on.
• Grill: The grill offers relatively standard dining hall grill food—burgers, veggie burgers, chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers, fries (in Idaho and sweet potato varieties), grilled cheese, and so on.
• Refrigerator options: The refrigerator has a mix of things from prepared salads to sandwiches to sushi and bento boxes, and standard fare like yogurt, juice, and fruit.

The options are occasionally limited, which is occasionally frustrating as the semester passes, but this is a normal part of dining hall life. Regardless, as you purchase your meal, make sure to say hello to Miss Sandy, who is one of the most delightful people at the Div School, and will often be a warm smile on otherwise cold and stressful days.

The Refectory is open in the early evening to provide food for those in evening/night classes, but there is not hot food or salad bar—leaving the refrigerator options. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. The Refectory also offers some grocery options and snacks, and has a white board near the door to take requests. The prices are usually rather steep, but you can pay for the convenience of not having to run to the store for eggs or cereal.

There is a break from 12:30-1:20 every day for lunch, with the eye to having people eat together. This has long been a tradition of YDS, and something we try to preserve. (There used to be formal, shirt-and-tie, sit-down dinners every day when students still lived on the Quad itself before the renovations in 2001.) The Refectory is a great place to catch up with people, to talk to faculty (many will eat in the Refectory too), and to spend some time building the sense of community you will begin to hear so much about. Space is limited in the Refectory itself, so the crowd often expands into the Common Room and Commuter Lounge. This is also a popular time for student groups to have meetings, or for other special events to take place.

Part of your student fees include a $450/sem. meal plan ($230 for part-time students) to use over the course of the semester. The meal plan is a declining points plan, where points are spent like money. Divinity points, however, are accepted at all Yale Dining locations open to graduate and professional students, and at the Blue Dog Café in the McDougal Center at the Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS). We also receive $1 off the cash price at the HGS Dining Room (which is still $9.25 for lunch, and $12.25 for dinner.) As with any Yale student or affiliate (including alumni, believe it or not), we also have access at Commons, which at one time was Yale's only dining room, but now serves as a "common" dining room for all students. (A fun trick at Commons is that they don't kick you out once you're in, so you can pay the breakfast rate and stay through to lunch without having to pay again; some students—including one of the Food Coordinators for BTFO—have been known to bring computers and homework and set up for a whole day.)
 
Starting last year, all "disposables" in the Refectory are recyclable. And this year, everything will be compostable, too! So before you toss that clam-shell salad container in the trash, aim for the compost bin instead. To be even more sustainable, there are a limited number of china plates and silverware outside the Refectory to wash yourself. These are even weighted in the system for the salad bar, so that you can use them for salads without being charged the weight of the plate. Alternately, several people bring Tupperware from home to use instead.

While the Refectory will not be open during BTFO—we cater all of the meals from local restaurants—it will quickly become a very familiar and dear space for you. A place to eat, a place to talk, and a place to share time with students and professors.