By Jasmine Li
AMHERST, Mass. -- When Lisa Yee's son brought his girlfriend home over the winter, the children's book author knew the perfect place for a family meal. It featured flavors from all corners of the world, made by award-winning chefs from locally sourced ingredients.
"You'll love it," Yee told them. "It's a dining hall."
The cafeterias at the University of Massachusetts Amherst joined Yee's date-night rotation when her husband took a job there as an adjunct professor. On the faculty dining plan, he pays $13.25 a meal.
"One of us will say, 'Wait a minute, we haven't gone to the dining hall in a while. Let's go there,'" she said. "And we both get really excited."
For nine years, UMass Amherst has been ranked No. 1 for campus food in the country, according to annual surveys of more than 100,000 students by test-prep company the Princeton Review. To locals, it's the No. 1 buffet in town.
The UMass dining halls are known for serving global cuisines worthy of the Michelin Guide to more than 30,000 students. They are also open to the public -- adults pay $12.50 for breakfast, $17 for lunch and $20 for dinner -- although the school doesn't advertise that.
"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.
On any given day, students can access four dining halls, a full-service restaurant, food trucks and more than 30 cafes and markets. 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.
"The freshman 15 here is definitely, definitely a thing," said John Ferrarelli, a senior from Weymouth, Mass. "Because you just try everything."
Around 87% of students are on a meal plan -- a figure that places UMass Amherst in the top 1% of schools nationwide, according to a survey by Nacufs, the collegiate-dining trade association. Students pay about $3,600 to $4,200 a semester for residential dining plans.
And they have opinions.
"We're aware that even if we served caviar every day, they'd get tired of it," said Garett DiStefano, director of dining services.
The dining halls host about 60 special events a year. They go all-out for celebrations like the Super Bowl and Diwali. But nothing beats Halloween, when they serve an annual Steak & Lobster dinner. The lobsters -- all 15,000 of them -- take an early-morning journey by truck from the Gulf of Maine to Amherst, via Boston.
"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."
Making the most of even nonholidays, guest chefs are invited to create special menus.
Last month, that was James Beard Award-winning chef Ricky Moore, who curated a Southern- and Caribbean-inspired menu at Hampshire Dining Commons. It included Swahili coconut chicken and lemon icebox cake.
The scale and pace of dining-hall cooking brought back memories of his time as an Army chef, Moore said.
"My first job was a paratrooper," he said, "and I like to tell people I landed in the kitchen."
About 20% of ingredients served at UMass are locally sourced, said chief procurement officer Christopher Howland, who oversees an annual purchasing budget exceeding $40 million. A fan favorite is the chocolate milk, which comes 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.
Ana McGuire drives 40 minutes from Longmeadow, Mass., every Friday to have dinner with her son, a junior, at Berkshire Dining Commons.
As a UMass parent she eats for free, but there is one downside: The food on campus is so good that when he comes home now, her cooking no longer cuts it.
"He says, 'Mom, I'm sorry. I love you so much, but I miss the food,'" said McGuire, a dental-practice supervisor. "No offense taken. I want to go, too."
The dining halls' variety and price point have also made them a local favorite.
Tamara Bowman, a mother of four from Northampton, regularly takes her two oldest children to lunch at Worcester Commons.
"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,'" she said.
Her son beelines for fries and chicken nuggets. Her daughter goes for the pasta station first. Bowman hits the salad bar, followed by the burger buffet.
"I really like that you can make a salad and put pickles in it," she said. "Because where else can you do that?"
While growing up in Amherst, Kanyinsola Okuwobi ate at the university with her family once or twice a month, usually after church on Sundays. She would run into friends and neighbors who had the same idea. The food was always good, she said; she was a kid at a buffet after all.
Now a freshman at UMass Boston, she's getting a taste of nostalgia. Okuwobi relocated to UMass Amherst's Newton campus last month after a dorm pipe burst and flooded her building. For the Lunar New Year, the dining hall served dishes like wontons, spring rolls and orange chicken.
"It was amazing," she said. "I kind of forgot about my problems for a moment."
Write to Jasmine Li at jasmine.li@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
