Dining

Foodies, welcome to Bennington. Here dining is as personal as you make it and as delicious as you want it to be. Bennington’s Dining Hall serves new menu items, crowdsourced recipes, and grill stations manned by professional chefs and cooks to make meals on demand in addition to offering traditional, student favorites and ample soups, salad, and side dish bars. With an elaborate spice and seasoning rack stocked for the student cooking area, you may also take cooking into your own hands—sourcing some of the freshest ingredients in town.

In addition to the Dining Hall, where the College’s main salad bar and hot meal items are served, you may find yourself grabbing ready-made, go-to meals at the Student Center for breakfast, lunch, dinner or late night feasts. At once a pub, cafe, snack bar and minimart you will have your pick of sandwiches and wraps, nachos and pizza, smoothies, freshly baked desserts, espresso, chai and many other specialty drinks. And you will never have to leave campus to pick up key cooking and snacking staples, all located at the Student Center mini-grocer.

Students with dietary restrictions or allergies, as well as vegan and vegetarians, will find something available at every single meal. Our executive chef and cooks provide a wide range of options, drawing on cuisines from Thai to Cajun to Italian to Korean.

Where You Eat

The Dining Hall is more personal and intimate than what you might think. You may eat in quiet dining rooms with small tables, bigger dining rooms with tables for large groups or people coming in and out, or any number of smaller mixed seating rooms. With nicer weather comes nicer views. During the spring, summer and fall seasons you may choose to ditch the hall altogether and eat on the porch looking out to the College’s most famous “End of the World” view. Of course, you can head to your house with staples and eat there, have meals catered or eat in the Student Center and a select group of local eateries where meal cards are accepted.

What You’ll Eat

What you eat is up to you, and you can sound off about it too with a note scribbled on a napkin. There diners offer feedback and suggestions to the staff. In addition to daily food staples (like sandwich, cereal, and ice cream bars) the staff rotates through many different menus that draw on Italian, Korean, Thai, Cajun, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Greek, Fusion, Southern, Southwest, and Irish cuisine among other global influences. Food is labeled clearly for you if you are vegan, vegetarian, gluten sensitive, or Kosher. In addition, staff update the producer’s board with the items that come straight from your neighbors and peer yards. Stay on the lookout for student grown Purple Carrot Farm items. After ending its contract with Coca-Cola, the Dining Hall now serves Maine Root beverages and other juices.