And breakfast and lunch and coffee, for that matter.
Where to begin... My mother was absolutely indespensibly in all aspects of my moving in, but very much so in helping me to track down some good restaurants. The entire week I was at Harvest, she was perusing the offerings of New Haven. As it often is around universities, there are plenty of affordable restauraunts in the near vicinity. Some good ones: a bookstore/cafe called Atticus housed on the lower level of the Yale British Art Gallery, staffed almost entirely by Spanish speakers (sound like Santa Fe at all? It's good--I get to practice), which serves myriad pastries, simple soups and salads, and good coffee and tea. It's only a four minute walk from where I am, as well; there's also a place just as nearby called Claire's Corner Copia, which is, as it happens, on a corner. They serve good vegetarian dishes, presumably "Mexican" breakfast, though I have yet to try any of them, smoothies (good), and very good Numi Earl Grey. It is, however, a tiny bit on the pricier side, but wins "Best of New Haven" every year. Another good spot we found was Mamoun's, a funny little Syrian place, the windows full of tall potted plants, which serves very good falafel and cardamom tea (!) in paper dishes. I have a very deep love for falafel, rooted in what I don't know. I've not had any bad food experiences yet, and I even got to go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday.
The Saturday market (there are several during the week, as well) is on Wooster Square, in what is presumably the Italian neighborhood of the city. It's a quiet affair compared to the riotous glory of the Santa Fe market, but is was cute and fun nonetheless. It looked far on the map, but in reality was probably a ten-minute walk from campus. There were people selling fruit and veggies, of course, as well as honey, very good cheeses, both goat and cow, baked goods, including wheat-free ones, fresh milk, flowers, and gorgeous handmade soaps. I got some very good apples, sungold tomatoes from Peter, from Northfordy, lovely zinnias, and a sweet and suculent bell pepper. I did not take any photos of the farmer's market, because I am an ass, but I will get some in the future. There was a fellow playing the guitar and singing, and children and dogs and young rofessionals with their canvas bags and baskets. It was indeed a thing of familiarity.
From there I walked about a block down to a cafe called Fuel I had read about, as small, funky place hung with cool art, that would not have been out of place on ABQ's Nob Hill, nor even in Santa Fe. Their coffee is fair trade and organic, and was very good, even for someone who has kind of gone off the stuff.
That's all fine and well, you're saying, but what about the food on campus? My experience thus far with dinig hall food has been... good, actually, for the most part. There are 12 residential colleges at Yale, and each has it's own dining hall (though you can dine in whichever you choose), and it used to be that one of them, Berkely was entirely organic. They realized, however, that this was unfair, and changed it so that now each dining hall is 40% or 60% organic. In addition, the Sustainable Food Project at Yale has done wonderful things: at every meal, thereis at least one sustainable entree and side, and on certain days the entire meal will be sustainable. This means organic, local, seasonal, etc. Yesterday for lunch I had a corn and scallion tart, grilled zucchini, and a marinated brocolli-cauliflower salad. Dinner was chicken with yogurt-mint sauce (quite tasty), fresh wax bean, and a very tasty corn-tomato zucchini salad (very seasonal--people have zucchini out their in September, hence its presence in every meal).
I know that I sound like an unbelievable food snob, but it is something that's important to me. Of course, not everything has been wonderful, but I think it's far, far better than dining hall food often is, and my expectations have certainly been surpassed.
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