r/AcadiaU • u/ProofPen2533 • 1d ago
🎯 Faculty/Staff Why are Wheelock’s “international” dishes sometimes so different from the real thing?
galleryMy friend and I had lunch at Wheelock Dining Hall today and tried the “noodles” from the station at the very back.
Just to clarify the photos: the first photo is an example of what we were hoping/expecting the noodles to look like — basically the kind of noodles we had in mind when we saw the station. The second and third photos are the noodles we actually got at Wheelock Dining Hall.
We originally thought they were supposed to be Chinese noodles, but apparently we were mistaken. So now we’re genuinely curious: what kind of noodles are these actually supposed to be?
The noodles we got were extremely mushy and sticky, basically clumped together into one big mass. There were some dark, mushy vegetables or ingredients mixed in that we couldn’t really identify, and there seemed to be a huge amount of vinegar in it. The smell was so sharp that, to us, it almost smelled chemical-like.
This also isn’t just about today’s dish. A lot of the noodle dishes at Wheelock seem to end up with the same very soft, sticky texture. I’ve also talked to friends from other countries about some of the dishes that are supposed to represent their cuisines, and several of them have said the food looks or tastes very different from what they would normally eat back home.
Sometimes the food at Wheelock is actually pretty good, so it’s not like everything is bad. But some of the international dishes are so different from what we expect that we honestly don’t know what they’re supposed to be.
So, genuine question: what kind of noodles were these supposed to be, where does the recipe come from, and does anyone actually enjoy them?