Uncovering the Differences Between Sallies’ Cooking and Everyone Else’s Meals

Toast like cardboard, canned beans, and unspiced vegetables. Sound familiar? Just another breakfast in halls. After one particularly depressing breakfast last term, when we ran out of bread, I heard a tantalising rumour: Sallies students get avocados and mangoes every single day. A California vegetarian myself, I could scarcely believe how beautiful life would be if I got to eat avocados for breakfast instead of picking at suspiciously slimy lettuce for every meal. Now that we’re all back and at the mercy of halls catering or Tesco, I set out to uncover the truth. 

One chilly Monday morning, I met with Alex Barnard, a fourth-year and new resident of St Salvator’s Hall. Barnard has previously lived in McIntosh Hall and private flats, but chose to return to university housing for her final year at St Andrews, mainly because “it’s just so easy!” And while having most meals cooked for you does help the student drowning in a busy schedule, most of my fellow second years are thrilled to have a kitchen to cook their own dinners in, because, as Honey Rothert says of John Burnet Hall’s catering, “though the staff were so nice, it just wasn’t good food.”

It seems this isn’t the case at Sallies. With three-course dinners eaten under the glow of stained glass, Barnard provided compelling evidence that a conspiracy is indeed at work. “Honestly, it’s ridiculous,” she said of the number of food options. “There are berries, prunes, tangerines”— and yes, mangoes (though “not every day,” Barnard specified). With so many different housing situations under her belt, Barnard confirmed that “Sallies food is fancier than other halls.”

So if Sallies does in fact have mangoes, what of the mythical avocados? “Yes, it’s true,” Barnard said. “Sallies has all sorts of things like that.” 

The salad bar isn’t much different than she remembers from her days in McIntosh, save for one detail: the dressing. “It’s f***ing crazy,” she said. “They have a whole section that’s just different garnishes and sauces and stuff”.

So who’s behind this devilish conspiracy to keep mangoes and avocados and fancy dressing away from the rest of us? Does Sallies just have a bigger budget than other halls? Barnard couldn’t say for sure, as this is her first time serving on any hall committee, but she is impressed by how much food they order up for events without blinking twice. In the first two weeks of term, she counted 40 Domino’s pizzas and hundreds of Fisher and Donaldson donuts among the treats the committee has called in for events. A Pimms social was another notable tick on the Sallies social calendar. Barnard also mentioned that the committee will order pizza for the hall some weekends, something I certainly would’ve loved last year, especially after discovering it took 40 minutes for the burner to get hot enough to boil water for pasta.

“Sallies just generally feels so fancy,” Barnard said — an opinion most of us likely share, even if, like me, you’ve only tried to catch a glimpse of the inside while lying out on the lawn. It is true that as you walk up to St Salvator’s Hall, everything is “so beautifully manicured.” As Barnard put it, Sallies is a destination. “We get emails telling us not to let people tailgate us inside, because there are always tourists looking through the windows.” 

Beyond appealing to your average tourist as a pretty place to snap a picture, St Salvator’s draws distinguished visitors from far and wide to speak at their high table dinners. This apparently unique tradition happens every Thursday evening and consists of standard hall fare served as a sit-down three-course meal, after which gowned students head to the Regency Room, Sallies’ “fancy gathering area” to drink port and listen to various speakers. Alaina Walker, a second-year student who used to serve on the Sallies committee, counted military officials and Oxford professors among the weekly speakers. “You’d get a little invitation to your door each week,” she explained. “We tried to appeal to everyone’s interests [with the different speakers].”

“It does invite a certain kind of person,” said Barnard of living in Sallies. Though first-year hall allocation is purportedly based on whether you’d like an ensuite and not your socioeconomic status, St Salvator’s has gotten a reputation as the swankiest hall in St Andrews. I can’t offer quantitative data, but Barnard agrees with the stereotype: “It does feel very English and very posh.”

Though not all Sallies food is sunshine and rainbows (or, in this case, mangoes and avocados), Barnard’s view on catered accommodation was a lot brighter than second-year Isla Rodger’s perspective on the McIntosh dining hall or Isabella Lennon’s opinion of ABH. 

“They check your dining card when you go in and give you your main portion of food,” she explained. Seconds are hard to come by, and sometimes, as in the case of one infamous meatball meal, that means hardly any food at all. “They had a ration,” she said as she scrolled through her phone to find a picture of the unfortunate first-year dinner. “You got six meatballs — and these were tenpence-coin-size meatballs!”

The thought that Sallies gets “extra privileges” while other halls ration out mini meatballs worries Rodger, who wonders if the University is internalising the idea that appearances matter most — “Are they saying they [Sallies students]are better than us?” As she put it, “it seems like Sallies is the favourite.”

Walker agreed that the experience could be “pretty luxurious.” She cited pancakes, waffles, and a cheese and meat platter as part of the breakfast offerings, which she described as “heaven.” Croissants seem to be a staple of halls’ breakfasts, but one major difference in Sallies? “We had raspberry croissants [...] and the placard said they were Taste croissants.”

Taste pastries being served in the dining room? Are Sallies students getting to skip the line at one of the most popular places in town to eat raspberry croissants in their wood-panelled corridors? It was impossible to immediately corroborate this statement with other Sallies students, but when asked for comment, Taste asserted that they are unaffiliated with St Salvator’s Hall (though they may use the same provider). Where all of the coveted croissants end up remains uncertain, but “everyone I asked about it was so offended” to think there’s some secret Sallies delivery system, one Taste employee reported.

So yes, the rumours are true. Sallies students do eat better than the rest of us. Though it might be a spectacular experience for the select few who live there, students like Rodger think “it’s just not right” that one hall gets special perks.

But what’s there to be done? With a sly smile, Rodger asked “Well, you know what’s happened historically when some people were more privileged than others?” Ignoring the International Relations degree I’m working towards, I shook my head. “The people will eventually have their say, and Sallies is our Versailles.”

*The Saint does not endorse or in any way encourage marching on St Salvator’s Hall and demanding access to their avocado supply.

Illustration by Vera Kaganskaya