Welcome one, welcome all– to the most anticipated article of the Hall 2022-2023 school year! In this article, we will be discussing the best, worst, and most unique school lunches that have been served. Buckle up, because this is going to be the editorial of the year!

Disclaimer: Personally, I am grateful for all of the school lunches that I have eaten this year. Although some of the quesadillas I get come with a single tortilla and five pieces of chicken, I love the school lunch ladies for everything they do.  

And I appreciate the state government for making school lunches free, which has saved me a good load of money that I can now spend on other things such as a massive inflatable duck I plan on launching down the Farmington River with some friends later this summer. (Stay tuned for the Fall edition to read about how it went.)

To start– let’s congratulate every school lunch for serving us well this year. The wide variety of food and often creative selection of choices every day helped us get through the school year. 

Nothing was better than starting off my 10 a.m. lunch period with a warm plate of popcorn chicken and mashed potatoes. From the garlic bread pizza, to the classic sunbutter and jelly sandwiches, to the mysterious “gravy” that would lay on the mashed potatoes, the school year wouldn’t be what it was without the perfect high school mid-day meal that is served by our wonderful cafeteria staff.

Now, time to crunch some numbers. After spending the week collecting data from students all across the school by sending out a Google Form (check “How to Effectively Advertise at Hall High School” for more information on how I got people to fill it out).  I also asked a non-biased sample of people in the school cafeteria at different times of the day. 

Here’s what I collected after asking approximately 150 random students:  The lunch meal that was voted most popular by the people -and a few teachers – was the Chipotle Bowl! Of the people I surveyed, 20.5 percent voted for the Chipotle Bowl. 

This meal was served only twice this entire year; so winning the gold medal demonstrates how impressive it was. The bowl consisted of your choice of meat (beef, chicken, veggie-substitute), choice of vegetables to put on top, other toppings that would normally appear on a Chipotle Bowl, and their chipotle sauce which struck a chord in many peoples’ taste buds (in a positive way). 

Earning a silver medal was the mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. The meal consisted of 3-5 mozzarella sticks with a delicious marinara sauce. If lucky, the mozzarella sticks would be warm enough so that the cheese would pull apart like the ones in a glorified Pizza Hut commercial. The combination of melted cheese in a crunchy bread crust mixed with marinara sauce often provided for a classic yet appetizing meal. 

Receiving the bronze medal, with 10.2 percent of people voting for it, was nachos grande. This lunch consisted of a handful of tortilla chips, a drizzle of nachos cheese, and meat sprinkled on top of the chips. There was also an additional table allowing students to add olives, lettuce, or salsa to enhance their nachos grande experience.

While interviewing students in the cafeteria, I stumbled upon a student who was very passionate about their nachos grande experience. This student preferred to remain anonymous, but was not pleased by several encounters with the nachos grande. Here’s what they had to say:  “The nachos cheese was, by far, one of my least favorite lunches that I’ve had here at Hall High School. The chips are extremely salty, the cheese hardens to merge all of the chips together like a reverse Pangea, but the meat isn’t extremely awful. Overall, I think that the nachos grande doesn’t deserve a place on ‘best lunch’ but I could see why people would vote for it.”

The lunch meal that was voted least favorite or rather, “most unappetizing,” by a pretty big margin, was the sausage, “egg,” and cheese sandwich on a croissant. The lunch raked in 14.8 percent of the votes for it to claim this position on the podium. 

The egg often came burnt, and its texture was rigid yet flimsy. Some called it a “frisbee” and questioned what the egg actually contained (hence the quotations around “egg”). The croissant that the rest of the sandwich sat in between was very often solid, making the first bite feel like you were teething a cinder block. The sausage was always consistent and was not disappointing but when mixed with the croissant, cheese, and egg, people already had a bad taste in their mouths.

 Following not too far behind at 12.5 percent is the beef hot dog. To begin, many people aren’t fans of hot dogs to start with. Something about the combination of “school lunch” and “hot dog” must create a negative aura around it. (There have also been rumors of hot dogs being made of rubber and bouncing to extreme heights, but that has not been proven.)  

Here’s what Lauren Moskal, a junior at Hall, said about the sausage, egg, and cheese on a croissant: “Um… it’s not only water buoyant– but air buoyant. Very beneficial if you want a fun activity to play with your friends in the classroom. Or pin against the wall of your teacher’s classroom as a decoration.”

As an aside, Moskal had more to say about her favorite lunch at the school. She voted for the pulled pork sandwich, saying, “The pulled pork sandwich is my favorite lunch at the school because it’s bussss…”

Bus? Who knows what that means? Probably another Gen-Z word that makes them sound more hip and different from other generations. Maybe the vehicle. Maybe not.

Anyway, finally, tied for third place, is the Jamaican beef patty and the grilled cheese with tomato soup. Both bronze medalists received 9.1 percent of the votes. 

One of the meals that were voted for “Most Unique” was the Cinco de Mayo pizza. This pizza consisted of a doughy base, with marinara sauce, nacho cheese, and cubes of meat on top. People questioned the texture and material of the meat. Some also thought that the nacho cheese didn’t mix well with the classic dough on the pizza. It also didn’t look like pizza.  Just saying.

Another meal voted “Most Unique” was the loaded fries! The grainy, and mostly dry fries were topped with chili, nacho cheese, and meat. This was a very controversial lunch, as there were a handful of people who opposed this lunch, but also a handful of people who didn’t hate the idea of loaded fries.

Well that’s another year of Hall’s Cafeteria Chronicles! We hope you enjoyed this really interesting and really informative article about school lunches. A great way to end this is to once again, thank the Cafeteria staff for everything they do for us students and for being able to feed us with meals every day.