Tips for Dining @ Brown
Hi again rising first-years, and all community members!
Here are some quick tips I picked up. I definitely don't know all the best hacks for each dining hall so please leave a comment if you have any good ones that I missed.
- Save your real-food-money for the harder half of the semester. Money can't buy happiness but it can get you a 2:00 a.m. burrito from Baja's. Which is the same thing, anyways.
- Get in the free food groupchat so you can descend like a hawk on any free food drops--look out for those random pizza spawns around campus.
- You will download the BrownU app and check the dining hall menus and open hours. Dining halls will appear to be closed. They are most likely not closed, the app is usually wrong. You will learn dining hall hours with time.
- Do you enjoy wasting money? Go with the 20 swipes weekly meal plan! This way, you get LESS flex points (the closest thing to real money you can get), you are limited to 4 swipes per daylight cycle, and all your leftover swipes disappear at the end of the week. (Right back into You-Know-Who's wallet.) Congratulations! Idiot.
- The Ratty: Maturity is realizing that the Ratty is the best dining hall on campus. Open seven days a week, from pretty-early morning to way-too-early evening, the Ratty offers pretty much everything you could ever want. Have at it.
- The Ivy Room: Right under the Ratty, literally! Ivy Room smoothies can get you through a week easy.
- Theft: I can't legally endorse pocketing small items from The Ivy Room, Jo's, and The Blue Room. But I did hear from someone somewhere that Brown includes the expected cost of this activity in your bill anyways. So is it really theft?
- Andrews: The mostest bestest quality food on campus on average. Gets old fast. Bleh pizza, solid grinders (sandwiches), good East Asian-inspired bowls. Burrito bowls on the weekends! The Brown dining hivemind congregates here on salmon and pho nights as well. Expect queues of 70-80 people during busy times - arrive either early or late to avoid the line. Or, use your new Brown networking skills and strike up a conversation with your "friend" who just happens to be at the front of the line.
- Double swipes are king and Andrews doesn't make you do that gross ReusePass thing. Get a bowl for today and a bowl for tomorrow!
- See all those chips at Andrews? They're free. Remember this the next time you want to spend money at a vending machine.
- Gourmet-To-Go: The most underrated not-a-dining-hall dining hall. Any snack or small meal you could want. Only takes Flex Points, Bear Bucks, or your real money. Grab a Hot Pocket, protein bar, or an energy drink. Great for getting through your boring lectures.
- The Blue Room. Almost heaven. The real reason you wake up in the morning. Pastries of every kind. Muffins, croissants. Coffee. CLIF bars. And the Bacon Egg and Cheese Sandwich. So much joy for so few Flex Points. But be careful. After you buy 35 Bacon Egg and Cheeses in 35 consecutive weekdays, you will not have any more Flex Points. And you will be sad.
- Save Your Flex Points: The reason the Flex plan is the only real dining option. Flex points can be used at vending machines, Gourmet to Go, and the Blue Room. The vending machines in Page-Rob have those AMAZING Milano cookies. Machines outside VDub and Jo's have ice cream. Don't blow all your Flex Points in one month, or you will be sad.
- Jo's: The earlier you get to Jo's, the better the food, the cleaner the dining hall, the more options you have (quesadillas, paninis, sundaes, and JO'S GRILLED CHEESE!!), the better your sleep schedule, the less alcoholics/stoners you will run into, and the more your digestive system will like you. But you will learn that Jo's really hits at 1:49 A.M. when you and your big back get the seventh spicy with of the week. Put some Jo's sauce on that bih, grab some chips because the fries are stale and soggy, and eat your way out of your misery. That is Dining @ Brown.
If y'all have any questions or contributions just drop a comment. Thank you!