WHY

Maybe 2 or 3 times a year I get restaurant food so bad that I go through at least a couple of the 5 stages of grief. Today I went through anger and now that I ate this monstrosity and I'm not hungry: sadness. Read more about this tragic food-like item after the jump


I was walking to the UCD MU at lunch to get my normal boring but serviceable salad from the salad bar, when I spotted the Star Ginger food truck parked in a weird spot off the quad. In like 2013 when I first started working on campus (as opposed to off campus, where I was closest to Pluto's for lunch), I started getting both the veggie and chicken banh mi from this cart and they were both good. Crispy bread and crunchy pickled veggies. I can remember how much they cost, maybe 5 bucks.

Then a few years back they took them off the menu. I stopped going to the cart, which seems to largely sell Thai tea to the students (smart students to avoid the food). Today I had the stupid idea to try the tofu banh mi again. It should have been a warning sign when I stepped up to order a "tofu banh mi" and the worker repeated "tofu sandwich". It says banh mi on the sign, which by the way also has no prices.

So it's NINE DOLLARS. I think I have heard her wrong and hand over a 20, but nope, I get 11 back. I wait for 5 minutes and then the other worker calls out my number and says "tofu sandwich".

I get back to my office and unwrap this monstrous, hateful creation. The red squiggles are sriracha that I have applied in an attempt to create flavor. The veggies are sauteed red pepper, zucchini and onion, with little cubes of fried tofu and absolutely limp bread. No one on earth who is not starving wants to be handed this sandwich. No worker at that truck has ever made this sandwich for themselves. WHY DOES THIS SANDWICH EXIST???

Here's hoping that this is the worst thing I eat in 2020.