The main eating street in Alcalá is Calle Mayor and its continuation into the Calle Libreros area near the university. A row of restaurants and tapas bars under the colonnaded arcades does brisk business with students, day-trippers from Madrid, and locals who have been eating here for decades. Alcalá has a specialty: gazpacho manchego, a hearty game and flatbread stew that has nothing to do with the cold tomato soup of Andalusia.
Hostería del Estudiante, inside the university complex on Calle de los Colegios, is the most atmospheric option — a sixteenth-century building serving traditional Castilian food in rooms that feel unchanged since the university's golden age. Book in advance at weekends. For something simpler, the tapas bars on Plaza Cervantes offer reliable traditional bar food at reasonable prices.