My first semester, I lived in Scott Hall, which meant I had to eat in the Phelps Dining Hall. Phelps Dining Hall is mostly for freshmen and sophomores. The second semester I moved to Cook Hall, so I gained an access to Cook Dining Hall. In order to be able to eat in Cook Dining student needs to have certain amount of credits or to live in Cook Hall. This results that only the upperclassmen and Cook Hall residents are the only ones who are eating in Cook Dining Hall.
In my opinion both dining halls provide a very good standard for a college dining in the terms of food quality, but there are few differences. Phelps Dining Hall is about twice as big as Cook Dining Hall, which reflects in the number of options. In Phelps there is bigger variety of food and drink options. Cook Dining Hall does offer that many options. There are multiple “stations” but it is significantly smaller than at Phelps. That being said, based on multiple students’ opinion, Cook Dining Hall’s food is slightly better in taste. Some students assume that since Cook Dining Hall is cooking from less students the food tastes better than at Phelps. I would agree with this statement, but there are some nights when I wished I went to Phelps instead going to Cook.
In the end, the food in both dining halls is very good, so I would say it is a win in either way. The difference is only in who is able to go to Cook and who is not.