On the seventh of February, the cafeteria served dumplings and kimchi for the first time. I decided that I needed to review it. It came with sriracha mayo already on top and kimchi on the side, all in a wide, flat-bottomed bowl. I also took the fruit pop and the “juicy juice” orange medley which is an orange juice with some other juice in it too.
Starting with the dumplings, they probably could have been a bit warmer. They were already covered in sriracha mayo sauce, which was nice, but only if you liked it. That is a problem, since the sauce is congealed, tastes bad, has an artificial spicy taste, and is unsettling in the stomach. The dumpling was no better than the sauce; the dough was passable but the filling was unpleasant. The filling was a chunky paste and tasted very bland. According to the cafeteria manager, they were also very time consuming to make. The kimchi tasted and smelled like kimchi and was pretty good, but did not look like kimchi since the color was off. Overall, the dumplings were pretty bad, but still edible, and the kimchi was pretty good.
The fruit pop was just frozen enough so as not to be too sticky, but was still soft enough to eat. The package, however, wasn't the easiest to open because of the condensation on it. The fruit pop itself consisted of quite a bit of whole fruit chunks which tasted good, with a sweet icy mush of fruits surrounding them. Overall, the fruit pop was very good and had a good balance of sweetness and sourness, but was annoying to open and seemed like it was supposed to be pre cut with scissors before being served.
When I poured the juice to take the photo, It did not look very appealing, as it was a bright, cloudy and opaque orange. I thought it might redeem itself with the smell, which it nearly did, as it smelled like orange juice, but had a note of some other fruit, which makes sense since it is a medley of orange (the color!) fruits. Sadly, the taste wasn’t better; I expected something very sweet with an unnatural orange taste like Fanta, but was greeted with a distinct lack of sweetness and a weird flavor from the other fruits and a weird sour aftertaste. Overall, it wasn’t very good and not worth getting again.
Overall, this meal was not good, and in the context of what it was supposed to be, I would go so far as to say it was bad. However, it is a meal that was recently introduced, and the training to make this food started pretty recently so maybe it will improve. The dumplings were a 1/10 and the kimchi a 5/10 in tastiness but not good in terms of how close it is to authentic kimchi. I think it was a 2.5/10 overall. The fruit pop was a 9.5/10, my only gripe being that it was hard to open and that it was a bit messier than other foods. The orange medley was a 3/10 and not really worth getting. Overall, the whole meal was 3.5/10. Other than the fruit pop it was not good, unpleasant even, and not worth getting since there are better things to eat. I am, however, excited to see whether or not this meal improves.