Dinner

Key points:

•  Remember to bring your Bodcard to dinner every night

• Informal starts at 6:00 and you can arrive until 6:20

• Formal-door opens at 7 and close at 7:20- remember to wear your gown

• Remember to bring your diet card (if you need one)

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Informal and Formal:

Informal is a faster paced dinner, where you will queue to collect food canteen style. Formal takes longer and involves the food being brought to you course by course. Gowns must be worn for formal dinner, but you need only wear this over your normal clothes. Also Latin grace is read by a scholar before food is served (all you need to do for this is stand!). Also, the buttery bar is open before formal if you’d like to buy wine or any other drink for dinner.

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Formal Fridays: Dinner is served at formal time on a Friday, where smarter dress is worn - shirt and smart trousers/skirt, dress, jumpsuit

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Meal Booking System: 

Everyone wishing to attend dinner needs t o book their chosen sitting by 10am 2 days beforehand (i.e. for Wednesday evening you need to book by 10 am Monday) on the meal booking system at https://topup.chch.ox.ac.uk/Main.aspx. Even if you are on the meal season ticket you need to book a meal. This aims to reduce food waste and help hall to manage their staffing needs. The bookings for each week will be open by the time the food email comes out with the menu, and you can block book the next week too. If you know you won't be able to attend a dinner you can cancel on the system until the 10am 2 days before deadline, if later you can cancel by emailing hallmanager@chch.ox.ac.uk. Booking a meal if you are not on the season ticket will mean you are charged £4.22 on battles.  

 

Special diet cards:

At the start of a new year, anyone with a special diet needs to register this with hall. Flexitarian, vegetarian and vegan options are all catered for by hall and can be booked using the booking system, so you only need to do this if you have another diet, or an allergy)

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To do so, go to the office in hall (on the left hand side, after the entrance) at a non-meal time and let them know what sort of card you require (e.g V Halal, Gluten free, no nuts etc). You will then be able to book your diet using the meal booking system, and hall will make sure you are catered for each night that you book. Please do come to the nights you book when you do this, as specially prepared meals are wasted if they aren't eaten. 

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Allergies

If you have an allergy you need to inform hall of this on the booking system, and check you get the right meal every evening. 

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Every day a list of all the allergens in the food for that day will be put-up on a board just before the red doors to hall on the left- make sure you check this before going in and take responsibility of your own health. 

 

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Meal plan:

Everyone living in college is automatically subscribed to the dinner meal plan - on this, dinners cost £2.86 a day and you are charged whether you attend dinner or not. Students living in Liddell are not on the meal plan. You can choose to opt-in if living in Liddell, or opt-out if living in college, by emailing the Steward: pauline.linieres-hartley@chch.ox.ac.uk. If you are not on the meal plan then you can still book a meal using the booking system and will be charged £4.22 per meal. 

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Inviting Guests:

Inviting guests is easy: on the meal booking system you can simply add a guest and their diet to your booking for any night as long as it is a night where hall is allowing guests and there is still capacity. This needs to be done by the regular booking deadline of 10am two days before the meal. Only two guests can be brought to each meal per person, but you can always ask your friends to book guests too. 

 

Guest Dinners

Guest dinners are special, formal, black tie dinners that happen twice a term. The dates for these are typically Friday of 3rd and 7th week (with the exception of the third term Trinity, when the second is Thursday of 8th week in order to avoid clashing with exams).

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A random ballot is run to determine who will get tickets to these dinners. The ballot will be run as far in advance of the dinners as possible, to ensure there is time to invite guests. An email will be sent out with a link to the form to enter the ballot, and the results will also be sent out via email. If successful, you will be able to bring one guest. If for any reason you are unable to come, you need to let me know as soon as possible, and your space will be offered to the next person on the ballot who was unsuccessful.

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Everybody has one priority pass a year for guest dinner. Using a pass will put you on a priority ballot above the standard ballot. If the size of the priority ballot is smaller than the guest dinner capacity, all priority balloters will be guaranteed a ticket. If the size of the priority ballot exceeds the guest dinner capacity, two ballots are run (priority and non-priority). You can use your priority pass when balloting for whichever dinner you would like but be warned that the guest dinners in Trinity (final term) are often oversubscribed, so you may not be able to go even if you've used your priority pass. Your pass will only be 'used' if you are on the final list for the dinner (i.e., If you aren't successful on the ballot, even after using your pass, or give up your ticket before the deadline, you will keep your priority pass.) Members of the JCR committee receive one extra pass, and priority passes don't role over between years- committee passes last for a year after your term on committee starts. 

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The cost of a guest dinner ranges from £30 to £40pp. A seating plan will be put together before the

dinner, and I will take requests of groups that would like to sit together. If you feel there is nobody going

that you know well, I will try to place people on tables with people in the same year - GD is a great time

to chat to new people! After GD everyone foes to the Undie for POB.

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Other special dinners

Occasionally, there will be other special dinners in hall, and these will be clearly indicated on the menu.

If there is any dress code required, or sign up needed, this will be in the email with the menu.

Some examples of special dinners include Holiday dinners, or charity dinners (where a slight additional

charge is paid and donated to a chosen RAG charity).