Dining
At NMH, we believe that food should be good for you and for the planet — and taste good, too.
Alumni Hall, our dining hall, is centrally located on campus. Hot meals are available at designated times, and our extensive salad, cereal, and deli bars are open nearly all day for grazing. There are no assigned seats, no formal dress requirements — mealtimes here are relaxing and comfortable.
Whether it’s stir-fry, the banh mi and burrito bars, or on-demand soft-serve ice cream, the food is delicious and inventive. We serve things like mahi mahi with pineapple salsa, vegetarian fettuccine, design-your-own stir-fry, and homemade pizza. For dessert, there might be blueberry pie or peanut butter bars.
There are lots of choices, including several daily vegetarian options, and our cooks love suggestions almost as much as they love the popular “chef’s choice” meals, when they really show off their culinary skills.
Our campus-wide commitment to sustainability is in evidence every day in our dining hall. Some of the food you’ll eat comes straight from the NMH farm: vegetables and herbs from the garden, maple syrup for your pancakes, fresh cider to drink. What we don’t grow ourselves, we try to buy locally. We’ve committed 10 percent of our budget to buy from area growers.
We employ sustainable and responsible practices in other ways, too, like serving fair-trade coffee and composting all our organic kitchen waste. Occasionally, we even pile up a day's discarded food to dramatize how much (or little) gets wasted. In 2003, NMH started the “trayless revolution" among secondary schools, colleges, and universities to save water and energy and reduce food waste.
Coffee, snacks, and quick items such as wraps, omelets, and breakfast sandwiches are also available at the snack bar in the Blake Student Center.