If you know me, you know I love food (who doesn’t?).  Although I don’t have a super nice camera or the hipster mentality to take pictures of everything I eat, I can tell I’ll be writing a lot about food; this is the first in the series of many food posts.  I will write about restaurants, half-baked recipes, homecookin’ (my parents are better cooks than yours!), snacks, drinks, and whatever else finds itself in my mouth (that’s what she said, yadda yadda).

What inspired this post is my lunch today: my final, and most devastating visit to J & H ever.  I will describe in gory detail later on.

I’ve had a 50% love 100% hate relationship with Temple’s dining halls.  The food trucks and stalls on campus are unique, delicious and cheap, and merit their own, more positive post at a later date.  But today I’ll be airing all of my dirty laundry with the synthetic, food-like substance Sodexo caters to my alma mater, Temple U. *cue exasperated groan from all Temple students*  Thankfully I have eaten at these places sparingly since sophomore year, barring a few exceptions.  For those of you who know them, I could often be caught in these situations with my pals Mikhail, Zaq, Keith, Adam, and Matt.  We bonded over these awful, awful experiences.

I’ll start with the cafes in the academic buildings.  These things weren’t half bad.  The prices were jacked way, way up, but the food wasn’t awful (it’s hard to mess up pretzels and pastries).  Plus, the coffee is pretty good, and only a buck to refill a travel mug.  Sure, most of the employees were either dead behind the eyes or furious that you disrupted them from texting, but all of the cafes had something that stuck out.  Tuttleman had decent sandwiches, and put weird, crushed up ice in your drink.  The one in the business school had a great coffee selection, and the baristas would give us free (delicious) scones/muffins over the summer.  The library’s was always swamped with Asians (not racist, simply true).  Ritter annex has one that is for whatever reason, neon blue.    Oh, and the one in Anderson hall made that whole hallway smell like tunafish.

Onto the SAC.   Set up like a shopping mall foodcourt, there was a pretty decent selection of food.  This place had some real hits in my book – and some spectacular misses.

• Cheesesteak place: 9/10.  Maybe the single best food you can get in Temple’s dining hall.  Delicious bread packed with tender steak, cheese and onions, Philadelphian ambrosia.  They weren’t a shitty, stuck up touristy joint (Pat’s/Geno’s, I’m looking at you) so they would let you put whatever you want on the steak.  My favorite was the pizza steak: provolone, onions, banana peppers and marinara sauce.  It came with a side of fries, or you could get a “Jumbo” which was flippin’ gigantic.  They might have made some other stuff, but who cares when there’s cheesesteak?
  • Mikhail Jean, if you’re reading this, I’ve seen you eat at least 50 steaks from here.
• Wrap Up: 8/10.  It’s hard to mess up a wrap, and this was a very popular stand.  As a result that meant lines for DAYS.  After the pasta place went belly up, they did the smart thing and just made another wrap place.  Another reason the lines were so long is because these were the laziest cafeteria workers at Temple.  But anyways, the food: the chicken was so breaded and drenched in sauce that any nutritional value from vegetables had been negated.  Asking for light sauce and grilled chicken solved this problem, thankfully.  The kettle chips and pickle were a nice touch.  Probably the thing I got most often, in hindsight.
• Einstein Bros: 7/10.  Bagels are such a delicious snack/light meal/staple breakfast.  The selection of bagels and cream cheese was solid, the sandwiches were totally delicious, and the pepperoni pizza bagels are to die for (I’ve seen Mikhail eat hundreds of these).  This shop suffered from awful coffee, long lines, and employees who could not say my name for their dear life.
• Stone oven pizza: 6/10.  The pizza was disgusting, and would receive negative points by itself.  The flatbread sandwiches more than make up for lackluster pizza, though.  My favorite was the chicken parm, which was  also served with kettle chips for some reason.  Pretty delicious, but these ladies were mean too.
• Salad bar: LOL like I ate salad/10.
• Dos Manos/Sushi place: 5/10.  Both of these places were perfectly average.  Close-but-no-cigar attempts at food that is made much better all over the city.  Dos Manos was a bland Chipotle/Qdoba knock-off, with rubbery chicken, plain white rice and salsa without any kick.  The sushi place made extremely small rolls, and used imitation crab meat, imitation shrimp, and probably imitation rice.  Palatable if drenched in orange spicy sauce + soy.
• Burger King: 2/10.  Already the worst fast food restaurant (another upcoming post, I promise), it suffers from being jammed into a university foodcourt.  The limited selection of food sucked worse than usual, and the prices were super inflated.  Has since been replaced, I think.
• Hot dogs/sliders: 0/10.  This stand was a virtual ghost town, I’ve eaten there  ~3 times.  Hot dogs sucked, tater tots were mushy, and I got the sliders once and threw up a couple hours later, so fuck this place.  Anyone know if it’s been rehashed again?
• Chinese place: -30/10.  A disgrace to Chinese food.  Granted, most of the China food I’ve eaten recently was made in North Philly kitchens, and may contain cat meat, but I still have standards for my China food.  Bland, chewy, and generally disgusting, this place was downright offensive.  And for reasons I couldn’t control, I kept coming back: sheer quantity of food, and extremely short lines – most other people had realized this place sucked and stopped going here. Maybe the biggest regret of my life.

And the SAC was the good dining hall.  J & H was worse than hell.  Johnson & Hardwick, located beneath the titular residence hall, was an all-you-can-eat kind of place, and the focus was on quantity over quality.  I don’t think any of the food here was actually food.  We took a cookie during the first month of school and left it in our dorm room all year long, and it didn’t mold, or get stale, or change whatsoever.  That’s just not right.  Before I type anymore, keep in mind that any food that isn’t fruit or cereal should have “fake” typed in front of it.  It could get repetitive if I kept going on about the fake eggs, fake cheese, fake meat, etc.

Why did I even go?  Some days, my friends and I would just be in a mood where we wanted to eat a lot, not necessarily something specific or edible.  Thus, we ended up at J&H.  I’d be very hungry when I arrived, and with eyes bigger than my stomach, I’d load my tray with a ton of food, take a few nauseating bites and instantly feel like shit.  J&H was a cruel beast.

• Breakfast/brunch was a joke, the “eggs” would squirt out water as I poked them with my fork, instantly ruining my appetite.  The bagels, despite their toppings, still managed to taste like nothing.  Cereal is exactly that – cereal.  Gorilla Munch was something I’ve never seen before, but was more bland than Kix.  The best way to eat the cereal (discovered by, I think, Mikhail) is to use hot chocolate instead of milk.  That’s innovation.
• Lunch and dinner were a shitshow.  Come during the rush hours, and it would be hard to get a hold of utensils, trays, seats, condiments, or anything else.  Combined with long lines and slow service, it was the beginning of a self-inflicted, excruciating gauntlet of impatience, dissatisfaction, and indigestion.  The vegetarian section had decent hummus occasionally, but other than that it was what looked like weeks old veggie burgers.  Or they may have been hockey pucks, I never touched one.  There was a pretty crappy “deli”, and a “classics” line that served meat & potatoes Americana meals that tasted a lot like Americana TV dinners.  The taco/quesadilla line was surprisingly good, though I could never figure out when it was open.  There was a daily selection of bland “pasta”, “burgers”, “hot dogs”, and “fries”, which were awful at best.  The pizza turned into cardboard a few moments after leaving the oven, so there was a short window whence it was enjoyable.  The saving grace was the “international” line with occasionally decent food cooked by an “actual cook” – the orange chicken was particularly good.  Last, and probably least were the drinks, as it was a hassle finding a clean cup, then finding a nozzle that was dispensing what it was supposed to dispense, and then balancing the aforementioned cup on an overstuffed tray.
• The best part was after the meal, or, after I had given up on eating that shit. My friends and I would be in some state of the itis – too tired and sleepy to move/communicate after eating waaaaay too much shit.  We’d make bad jokes.  Groan about how stupidly full we were.  Talk about the amount of waste we would be defecating shortly.  Inevitably, someone would throw a crunched up paper napkin into someone else’s cup.  This began J&H basketball, which could carry on for quite some time if we were feeling competitive enough.  When the itis was minimal, these games could get intense.  It was the only feasible way to burn calories after poor digestive decisions.
• The greatest grievance of mine with J&H is the godforsaken FOURTH MEAL.  Starting at about 10 PM to midnight, I think it was meant for drunks and potheads, as the food is all fast-food style instant gratification, and prepared so poorly that one must be under the influence to enjoy it.  The selection was limited to the following:  pizza, chicken fingers, chicken wings, fries and mozzarella sticks.  Temple University really cares about its students’ health — fourth meal may itself be the cause of the freshman fifteen.  In the heat of the moment I stuffed my face as fast as humanly possible, and I only realized my folly as I clutched my gut in pain.  I never learned from my mistakes, and kept returning to the place that left me swollen and comatose.  At some point they may have served me my ass, on a silver platter.

These memories came back in a hurry today, after my final meal in Johnson & Hardwick.  I officially graduated 6 months ago, and am no longer employed by the university, but that’s not the reason it was my last meal.

Little Wu was kind enough to treat myself, lab manager Khoi, Russian doll Darina and myself to lunch at J&H.  I ate voraciously, somehow forgetting that this was a losing battle I was waging.  I helped myself to a roast beef sandwich, steamed veggies, onion rings, a chicken patty, pasta casserole, pineapple and fruit punch gatorade, once again overloading my tray and subsequently my stomach.  I moaned and belched, trying to ease the pressure in my digestive system to no avail.  After dragging myself to the office, I felt the inevitable approaching.  The nausea, the sweating, the burping, I was soon doubled over my chair with my coworkers asking me if I was dying.  I raced the the bathroom as fast as possible without overturning my stomach, making it to the trashcan just in time to barf directly into it

BUURRP-URRRGH

Immediate relief, I made it, and I feel so much better!  Now let me just rinse out my mouth in the sink… …

HHRRGUURGLBUUUURGHHHH

A waterfall of my undigested lunch, leaving in the reverse order it went in, up to the chicken patty.  In a vain effort to cover the mess with paper towels, I caught a whiff of the sickly glop and out came the rest of it,

UUURGGH—BLAAAUUUGGH

onion rings, veggies (full green beans and lima beans), and finally the formerly delicious roast beef sandwich.  My stomach turned itself inside out into the sink, leaving a pink and frothy mash of noodles, vegetables, and mystery meat, along with any nostalgic memories of the dining hall I had ever had.  I was disgusted and ashamed, after 4 years, J&H still owned me.  The food was so vile my body simply rejected it.  I was weak, shaking and tired, I was helplessly overmatched.  I feebly walked back to the office, limped home and collapsed on my couch.  In the final round, Temple University had delivered the knockout blow.  My hat’s off to the champ.