For freshman Akiva Winkle, going to college presented a unique challenge: finding food at his new home that complied with his kosher lifestyle.
Because he keeps kosher — eating foods that meet Jewish dietary requirements — Winkle can’t eat the meat offered at the dining halls. He only eats meat that is slaughtered and prepared in specific ways and never eats pork or shellfish. In previous years, he would have had to rely on meals hosted by Jewish organizations such as IU Hillel and Chabad and what kosher items he could find in campus stores. But this year, IU unveiled a new option: Yalla.
Yalla is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and accepts meal swipes.
The new restaurant is in Godfrey Graduate and Executive Education Center and offers Mediterranean-style food served in customizable bowls. Options include shawarma, falafel, grilled chicken and kebabs, according to an email from Chabad at IU. The food is kosher and halal, which is food meeting requirements under Islamic law.
Winkle said he comes to Yalla two or three times a week.
“It’s great to have this option where you can come get meat and food when you’re not able to eat a lot of the options on campus,” he said.
Rabbi Levi Cunin, also director of Chabad at IU, led the effort for a kosher dining location in partnership with IU Dining. He said both Chabad and IU noticed students struggling to make it through the day, hungry because campus lacked kosher options. Cunin said he had a conversation with executive director of IU Dining Rahul Shrivastav and left knowing the university was serious about adding a kosher dining location to IU.
“He asked all the right questions — about the model, the challenges, and especially how we could keep kosher food affordable for students, given that it can cost up to 400% more,” Cunin said in an email to the IDS. “At first it seemed like an impossible task, but together we began to see a real pathway to making this dream a reality.”
Kosher meat is more expensive because it requires extra labor-intensive steps while preparing the meat, such as soaking, salting and washing.
But Chabad, Cunin said, was happy to offer guidance on Jewish life and traditions to make Yalla a success.
“Beyond food, Yalla represents inclusion, visibility, and pride — it shows that Jewish life is thriving and integral to the campus community,” Cunin said. “And because Yalla is also halal, it extends that sense of belonging and accessibility even further across campus.”
IU senior Noa Yedlin runs social media for Yalla and said she struggled freshman year with keeping kosher.
“It can be really difficult to go from the comfort of your own home to a new environment, finding food that works for you,” she said.
Having Yalla as a freshman would have been a big help, she said.
Yedlin noted that not all universities offer Kosher options.
“That’s something really special about IU, that there’s such an acknowledgment of different cultures that keep lifestyles in very different ways,” she said.
Yedlin said the café has been very positively received by Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
“It’s just good food that you want to eat,” she said.
