Arrillaga Family Dining Commons

For one, I have to say that the price you pay as a visitor to come dine here is SUPER CHEAP. Especially as AYCE?! Be my guest! (Or, I’ll be your guest!)
I came here on a Monday 12 PM, and it was packed! It is peak hours for lunch, and especially with all the summer camps going on and only 2 dining halls open, it’s a wonder it wasn’t even more packed!
Lunch today had:
–Salad Bar
–Pasta Bar
–Build Your Own Burgers (grill)
–Lemongrass Pork with rice
–Stir fry tofu with carrots/​white radish
–Tomato basil soup
–Steamed bokchoy, cauliflower, carrots, and lentil/​tomato soup
–Lemon bar with coconut
–Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
Pros:
–Clean place! Must dining halls are out of control and super messy when tons of people come trumping in. Stanford was able to keep it under control while keeping everything stocked!
–Legit bro meals! Oh boy, I felt so full but so CLEAN after leaving here! They use minimal oil and fatty foods to fill you up! Kudos to their chefs!
Cons:
–Where are the toppings for my ice cream?! I was shocked. Still shocked right now.
Tips/​Observations:
–My friend who goes to Stanford told me they have a secret athlete menu. Grilled salmon? Hell yeah!
–You can ask for grilled chicken breast by the grill station if you don’t want red meat!
–They follow the season closely to prepare their meals! Kudos to that to keep students experience a great dining experience in addition to keeping costs low!

This place is great! The food is always really good. Grab a piece of any dessert item that looks super good right away, as good desserts run out quick! Protein is limited: one or two items, though *very* well made!
The only real con is that sometimes people really do not clean up after themselves at the tables.

there was a LITERAL BUG in my kale never eating at arrillaga again. also bad desserts

Best value meal if you are a Stanford student. The meals consist of soups, pastas, juices, milk, tea, salads, fruits. Tip: check the menu before you go.
Best dishes: If they serve Mexican chicken mole you must go, because it’s beyond awesome. They also provide an awesome rice congee. They serve a good chicken soup and clam chowder.
They are the only dining hall which is open late night (till 2.30am) and they have a different menu for the late night menu. I like the ramen bowl (which might be bland for a few people). The chicken rice bowl with coconut sauce is also good. Do not order the vegan chicken wrap. They also have dances arranged during the late night dining on a few days which is pretty entertaining

It might seem a bit strange to give an on-​campus dining commons 5 stars, but now that Ike’s has been forcibly removed from campus, this is my go-​to.
It’s hands down the best value you can get on campus in terms of the variety of healthy (and unhealthy) options, quality ingredients, quantity of food (well, it’s a buffet) and taste. The place is also clean (big bonus points) and with all the windows/​natural lighting it seems much more awake than other options (e.g. Lakeside).
Warning: Food is better during the academic school year than during summer

This review applies to the late night crew only. The dining hall itself is closer to 2.5−3 stars, not great but not out of the ordinary for dining hall food.
Arrillaga Late Night dining replaced Stern’s in 2011. In the beginning, they were just a slightly more expensive version of Stern’s, and that was alright. And then began the downward spiral.
Price points were unreasonable. Chicken strips were 2 – 3 dollars more expensive than the west campus counterpart, and they didn’t even look like your normal frozen strips. Instead you got this homogenized flattened ovals — like taking a chicken fry, smashing it with a hammer, and then masking the toughened meat with paper thin breading. The chicken atrocity culminated in a watery dessert known as «chocolate chicken.» Don’t get it if you want to eat something that’s not mush.
There are similar issues with other items on the menu. Orange chicken is just a pre cooked chicken breast doused in sauce. The breakfast burritos are soulless, stuffed with lukewarm crisscut fries.
It’s such a shame this is the only campus late night option open on the weekends. West campus has it better.

This dining hall is located near meyer library and near the old gym and athletic facilities (track, pool, tennis courts), so it is great for convenience. It is one of the largest dining halls and serves quite a large amount of students. I think that most of the students are freshman (given the proximity to freshman dorms), so it can get a little crowded and noisy.
Food: For a dining hall, I give the food an above average grade. They have a solid salad bar, and a wide variety of side dishes. The main dishes are usually hit or miss, so you should check online first to make sure you’re going on a good day.
Atmosphere: While it is spacious and they try to make it a comfortable place with TV’s all around, I get the feeling that it is a little dirty, and more of a elementary school cafeteria feeling than a restaurant/​sit-​down place. Especially during the summer, there are often young youth groups that come in waves so that can make your experience a little hectic.
Expert tip: I highly recommend you go during parent’s weekend or welcome week where parents are there — the food during those days are PHENOMENAL.

Woohoo! As good as it gets!
Shout out to Barry Trost. I think of him every time I peruse the salad bar. Maybe if I eat enough wheat berries, I will some day have a ligand named after me.

Great selection, but it’s a hassle to request little things like lemons during mealtimes. This is only annoying when the kale is overdone and needs extra acid to cut the bitterness.
The food is pretty good, much better than Wilbur.
My main grievance is that for a place that claims to be so organic and sustainable, why are there so many competitive foods around (General Mills/​Kelloggs cereals, Coca Cola and other sodas). Additionally, why is it so important to make soda available to students starting at 6AM, especially during the summer when children who attend summer camps at Stanford can access them for all three meals?
Get it together, Stanford. Get those things out of the dining hall or stop making bogus claims. Misrepresentation can get you in trouble.

Review for salad bar only:
Well, the variety is poor, there’s only one choice of salad, which would be wilted Spring Mix. There’s like tomatoes and carrots as add ons. That’s pretty much it. Couscous has a bunch of onions in it, other stuff just doesn’t look appetizing, french fries were soggy, burgers were already pre-​made… They do have a vegetarian version for burgers and I can’t speak about the rest of the food, because it most likely had garlic, which I am allergic to. Beets have oil on them? WHY?
Healthy? Me thinks not. Edible? NO. May I suggest Tressider for salads?

Came here for all-​you-​care-​to-​eat for its weekend brunch. You can choose to eat healthy from its fresh salad bar and custom omelet station. Or you can indulge on unhealthy choices from the grill line and overdo it on the pancake, waffles, eggs, and sausages. Best of all, you can sit outside on its 2^nd floor patio. If it is too cold, there are plenty of tables in its sunlight dining hall.

I find it really funny that a campus dining hall is on Unilocal.
Pros:
* Food: In terms of dining halls, this is the best food I’ve had and is perhaps the best dining hall on campus. They offer a lot of vegetarian options and the meat dishes are often pretty tasty. These two things cannot be said for most other dining halls. Salad bar is nice.
* Persistence: You can show up and stay for hours, do your homework, get soda /​coffee refills, snack on stuff when you’re hungry again. I think you could theoretically show up for breakfast and leave at 2am when they close.
* Healthy: It’s POSSIBLE to eat fairly health here. I believe they buy organic and local when possible. You can also choose to avoid things that you view as unhealthy since it’s a buffet.
Cons:
* Food: It’s not ALWAYS good. It’s true that there are many vegetarian options, but other than the salad bar they are mostly carb-​heavy. It would be nice to see more creative vegetarian options that relied more on vegetables and legumes than pastas /​potatoes /​grains.
* Healthy: This place is touted as being healthy, but that’s only half true. They give you plenty of options to not be healthy; I’ve seen people load up their plate full of pizza with a heap of bacon on top, drinking chocolate milk on the side. You will only eat healthy here if you CHOOSE healthy options and eat them in moderation.
* Price: They recently raised the prices of meals (for graduate students, at least) by a dollar per meal OR MORE (up to $ 3 per meal increase!!!). If you want to buy a dinner and don’t know what you’re doing on their website, you will pay over $ 10 per meal. This is a Stanford dining problem in general, but it’s worth including in a discussion of Arrillaga Commons.
* Hours: While it’s true that you can be here all day, you’ll only get good food in small blocks of time. Dinner is from 5−8pm and if you stay or enter beyond that, you will be picking through whatever paltry leftovers there are from earlier. Maybe they bring out more food later, but my first hand experience is that 8:30pm seriously suuuuuuucks and isn’t worth paying money for. Go someplace else.
Overall:
It’s not a bad place, but a lot of us are bitter about the price increase. I would have given 4-​stars if not for that. It’s nice that you can choose what you want eat, instead of getting a burrito with way too much rice in it (I’m looking at you, Treehouse) or an obviously-​frozen-​before-​it-​hit-​the-​grill hamburger with bad-​for-​you fries (I’m looking at you, Axe), or a ridiculous amount of oily noodles with a bunch of other kinda-​chinese food slathered in corn-​syrup-​based sauces (damn you, Panda).
There are a few things about this place that suck, but it is probably your best option for food on campus if you can afford the new prices.

Stanford’s award-​winning dining avenue, the only place under Stanford’s meal-​plan that’s open in the summer. Free drinks, starbucks coffee and ice-​cream. Nice food variety with good quality, at unbeatable price. Great for watching sports events (like Euro2012) as they will set up a huge screen with several decent-​sized TV. Ample lighting through large windows, pleasant dining environment overall. A student-​ID is needed to enter. You can buy meal-​plan package downstairs.

Whether you’re physically active and need to replenish calories or just too lazy to cook daily (OR like me, an unfortunate combination of both), Arrillaga has got you covered. It’s conveniently located and open late, which already ranks it higher than most other places to eat on campus. They also serve food you can trust, as much of it is grown locally and prepared in new highly visible kitchen facilities. That the staff get together to eat the food here is both surprising and refreshing. And with a meal plan, Arrillaga is definitely the best all-​you-​can-​eat deal. It’s not uncommon to see grad students and even professors here with their families. Though it can be difficult to find seating for large groups during peak hours, that only speaks to the popularity of the place. Outdoor balcony and lower level lounge seating are plenty, and the dining hall remains one of the best places to watch big sports games with its huge projector screens.
Students also reap the benefits of Stanford’s «performance dining» initiative which caters to its athletes and offers very nutritious ingredients. There are always consistent options at the grill and salad bar, and you won’t be at a loss for variety with their fancier cuisine items that change daily. The university has certainly made it both enjoyable and convenient to eat well by investing so much in this facility.

Beautiful views from balcony. Clean eating areas. Big TVs. Quality of food seems to be better. I love thats its open longer than other dining halls.