Daily News

UMass Amherst Tops in Campus Dining for Second Straight Year

AMHERST — The food in the UMass Amherst dining halls is so good that the Princeton Review came back for another helping, choosing the school as the national leader in collegiate dining in the U.S. for a second straight year.

The announcement further cements UMass Dining’s reputation for serving up healthy, sustainable, and delicious food prepared by award-winning chefs, said Ken Toong, executive director of Auxiliary Enterprises at UMass Amherst.

“What an honor,” he said. “We are overjoyed about the recognition. Thanks to our hard-working staff and support from our students and the university community. You inspire us every day to create a memorable experience, one meal at a time.”

Added Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, “UMass Dining’s outstanding food helps make our campus a great place to live, study, and work. We’re very proud of our dining-services staff and all they do. They’ve always been number one to us.”

Rankings of the top 20 schools in 62 categories are posted online at www.princetonreview.com/best382 and included in the company’s 2018 edition of “The Best 382 Colleges.” The rankings are based on surveys of 137,000 students at the schools in the guide.

UMass Dining is the largest college dining-services operation in the country, serving 45,000 meals daily, or 5.5 million meals per year. Since 1999, overall participation the university’s meal plan has more than doubled from 8,300 participants to more than 19,200.

A self-operated program committed to providing a variety of healthy world cuisines using the most sustainable ingredients, UMass Dining incorporates recipes from accomplished chefs and nutritionists as well as principles from the Culinary Institute of America and Harvard School of Public Health to its cycle menu. UMass Dining is known for being among the most honored collegiate dining programs in America by many national organizations. For the past seven years, UMass Dining has been selected to the Princeton Review’s “Best Campus Food” list. It ranked tenth in 2012, third in 2013 and 2014, second in 2015 and 2016, and first in the 2017 and 2018 editions.