For most students, grabbing a meal on campus can be as simple as walking into the Brodhead Center and choosing from one of the 13 dining venues. However, for students with religious dining accommodations, finding food options that align with their diet is not always straightforward.
Duke Dining offers both kosher and halal options at dining locations across campus. While the Freeman Center Café caters to a wide range of dietary options for students observing kosher, the Center for Muslim Life provides a list of restaurants near campus with halal options, and Yalla, an on-campus food truck, serves Mediterranean cuisine that is both halal and kosher. Duke Dining also operates NetNutrition, an online tool to aid students in filtering menu items from on-campus eateries to meet their nutritional goals and dietary restrictions.
Students expressed generally positive sentiments about the University’s ability to meet their dining requirements, saying that Duke officials were largely attentive to their needs, although offerings could be limited in some cases.
“I think Duke does much better than most college campuses in accommodating halal food,” first-year Raahim Hashmi said.
Abdul Ahad, a first-year Master in Business Administration student, reported being satisfied with the religious dining accommodations available to him despite some limitations.
“The cafe [at Fuqua] does not offer halal meat,” he said. “… [But] they always have vegetarian protein options available every day so that if I'm not eating certain meat, my nutrition requirements are met by those vegetarian cooking options.”
According to Licelys Hamman, the general manager of Bon Appétit — which provides the food at the cafe — options for those who observe a halal diet are increasing.
“Earlier this fiscal year, we began to provide halal chicken at our grill that could be paired with most of the options in the cafe, and [we] are now serving all halal protein Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at our global station,” Hamman wrote in a March 21 email to The Chronicle, adding that there are plans to expand options through a partnership with Sitar, a local Indian restaurant.
First-year students are limited in where they can get their food on campus, which can present challenges for those with dietary restrictions. Under the first-year board plan, students are expected to eat two meals per day at Marketplace, the East Campus dining hall.
According to NetNutrition, since October, some Marketplace stations have started to serve halal items, including jerk chicken, Italian chicken and Greek lamb meatballs. Hashmi said he used to resort to vegetarian options prior to these choices being offered, since grilled chicken used to be the only regularly available halal meat.
“It definitely can be less of a balanced meal,” he said, noting that there’s “room for improvement” to provide more options for first-years on campus.
For students who keep kosher, finding consistent meal choices comes with its own set of considerations. The Freeman Center Café, the “only brick-and-mortar kosher restaurant in the Triangle,” according to Elana Friedman, campus rabbi and Jewish chaplain who supervises the Freeman Center Café, aims to meet those needs.
On weekdays, students can purchase food from the cafe, which has separate kitchens for meat and dairy products. Free Shabbat meals are provided weekly on Friday evenings, and Jewish Life at Duke also offers grab-and-go kosher meals that are available daily at Trinity Café and Gothic Grill.
“Duke Dining is an incredible partner … [and puts] such care, consideration and love into feeding Duke’s students, including its Jewish students,” Friedman wrote in a Jan. 30 email to The Chronicle.
Despite limited dietary options, students with dining accommodations appreciated the efforts Duke Dining has made to accommodate their needs. Ahad commended the University’s efforts to support students with dietary restrictions during orientation programming in particular.
“The one thing that stood out for me is that during orientation, or during any event, [Duke Dining] reach[es] out to the students,” he said. “They have a default dietary restriction form available, so I can update it anytime if my dietary restriction changes or if an allergy comes up.”
According to first-year Abby Rogers, who keeps kosher, Duke Dining approached her to discuss improving dinner options at Marketplace. For her, the price of kosher meals often exceeds the dinner equivalency limit of $10.90. Jewish Life at Duke shared that it is “currently reviewing menu options related to the equivalency at the Freeman Center Café.”
First-year Owen Ebner, who keeps kosher, also worked with Duke Dining to accommodate his religious restrictions. He explained that he and other students with similar dietary needs can now email a Freeman Center Café chef with their dinner order before 3 p.m. for it to be fully covered by equivalency. He added that his meal can also be delivered to Marketplace, enhancing the system’s convenience.
Many students, including Rogers, rely on Yalla for their religious dining needs. The food truck was brought to Duke as a collaboration between Muslim and Jewish communities on campus.
“They have a lot of things that we don't serve. We serve a lot of things that [Freeman Center Café doesn’t] have … so it gives people variety,” said Daniel Alexander, one of Yalla’s operators.
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Editor's note: This article was updated Thursday afternoon to reflect that since October, Marketplace has started to offer a greater variety of halal options for students.
Michelle Brown is a Trinity junior and an editor-at-large of The Chronicle's 120th volume.
Bhavika Verma is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.