Many students would say lunch is one of the most important aspects of the school day. As important as it is, one must ask the glaring question: are dining hall lunches good? Personally, I think this answer is mixed.
There are some days when lunch is good. Offerings like the Blackjack Chicken Burger and Pasta Bolognese are pretty good, but they vary. The Blackjack Chicken Burger is cooked perfectly, and adding spicy mayonnaise to it brings the burger to a whole other level. The pasta bolognese is also cooked to a perfect al dente, and the ragu sauce is packed with flavor.
The majority of lunches are just mediocre, but it does not descend into terrible.
One example is the Power Bowl. The Power Bowl consists of rice, vegetables, and grilled chicken. Power Bowl rice is pretty crunchy and stale, but the grilled chicken has a nice char on the surface and the chicken itself has a great grilled flavor. The veggies have a good texture, but lack flavor a bit.
Sometimes lunches are just bad. I don’t understand why it makes sense to have a salad as the main course (Southwest Salad or California Salad) when a salad bar sits nearby, with many more customizable options for dressings and toppings.
Other lunches are simply terrible. Who thought that it was a good idea to put pizza on the menu every other Friday when the dough is always undercooked and when you bite into it, it leaves a weird aftertaste?
On pizza days the other option is boneless chicken wings and rice. The boneless chicken wings are just breaded chicken nuggets with sauces dripped on them. The problem with this is that every single boneless chicken wing has a different amount of sauce on it, and the flavor doesn’t sink into the chicken. This flavorless meat is served over brown rice, which is very hard to chew and overall is just inferior to white rice in every metric except for calories.
…lunch at Haverford is hit or miss.
With these two lunch options, hungry students can be stuck in a hard place.
Overall, I think that the lunch at Haverford is hit or miss. There are some days where it is terrible, but most of them are fine, with some being pretty good. In the context of school lunches as a whole, I think that The Haverford School lunch is pretty good.
