The BHS Lunch Experience: A Culinary Disappointment

At Blacksburg High School, lunch is a daily gamble. The menu may promise the usual classic comfort foods, but what students actually receive is often far from what they expect. With limited options and questionable quality, school lunch has become less of a meal and more of an endurance test. Through 2 snow ridden weeks, I took on the challenge of trying 3 different meals to determine whether the cafeteria experience is improving, or if we’re simply being forced to accept disappointment on a Styrofoam tray.

Monday - Cheeseburger, Spicy Chicken Sandwich, Chocolate Milk, and Apple Slices

Monday’s meal had potential, as I decided to try the two cafeteria staples: a cheeseburger and a spicy chicken sandwich. However, "potential" does not equal quality.

The cheeseburger suffered from what can only be described as cafeteria torture. The burgers are wrapped, which means everything inside--the bun, cheese, and patty--ends up trapped in the same overly moist heat. The result? A texture that’s neither soggy nor dry but the worst combination of both. The bun isn’t really wet, but it’s strangely soft, with no structure. The patty, meanwhile, has lost all semblance of what would be expected to be a sear, blending into the cheese in a way that makes every bite feel like an indistinguishable mass of warm, dense food.

The spicy chicken sandwich, while slightly better, suffered from the same cafeteria curse. It was overcooked, overly processed, and somehow still lacked any semblance of spice. The slab had a faint orange hue that suggested heat, but the actual taste was more bland than anything remotely spicy. The bun itself had the texture of inexplicably stale bread, crumbling with each bite.

The only consistently decent part of the meal? The chocolate milk. It remains one of the few things the school can’t ruin, simply because they don’t make it or reheat it. It arrives prepackaged from a supplier, saving it from whatever happens to the rest of the food. It’s cold, sweet, and exactly what it should be, unlike the rest of the meal. The apple slices, while slightly brown around the edges, were passable. Not great, not terrible. Just an acceptable side in an otherwise unimpressive lunch.

Tuesday – Teriyaki Chicken, Baked Potato Bar (Chili & Cheese), Milk, and Apple

After a few too many snow days, I returned to the cafeteria, deciding on Teriyaki Chicken with rice, a baked potato with chili and cheese, an apple, and, of course, the ever-reliable milk.

Let’s start with the chicken. It arrived in a small Styrofoam cup, looking suspiciously pale and unseasoned. Any hopes for actual teriyaki flavor vanished the moment I took a bite, it was somehow both chewy and mushy at the same time, with barely any sauce to save it. The rice beneath it was worse. Dry, hard, and tasting like it had been sitting out just long enough to be noticeably bad but not quite inedible.

The baked potato was a mix of potential and disappointment. The inside was fine, it was soft, warm, and somehow cooked through. But the skin was a different story. Completely unseasoned, not a single grain of salt in sight, and hard enough that I eventually gave up on eating it. The chili was decent enough, actually resembling food. The cheese, however, had a gross layer on top, coagulated into something between rubber and glue, refusing to mix with the chili in any meaningful way.

The apple was standard school fruit. Alright, but with that weird waxy coating that made it feel a little too artificial. Unfortunately, it was also pretty mealy, making each bite just unpleasant enough to be a little disappointing. And just like with the chocolate, the milk stood out as one of the few reliable items.

Friday - General Tso’s, Apple, Chocolate Milk

The General Tso’s came in the usual Styrofoam cup, which by now kinda feels like a bad omen. The sauce was sparse, and what little there was barely clung to the chicken. It had the usual cafeteria problem of being both chewy and soggy at the same time, an unfortunate texture combo that made each bite worse than the last. The rice, which was mixed with corn, peas, and carrots, somehow managed to be both dry and slightly overcooked, with the vegetables adding nothing except occasional bursts of freezer-burnt sadness.

Then there was the apple. Really small, unimpressive, and had some mysterious white marks on the skin. Maybe melted wax, maybe something else, but definitely not something you want to think too hard about while eating.

And as always, the chocolate milk remains the one thing that never disappoints.

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Written by Asher Mercier

Photography by Miles Johnson