Love it or not, school cafeteria food holds a special place in our collective memory. These weren’t gourmet meals by any stretch, but they were our meals, served on those plastic trays alongside a carton of milk and whatever vegetable the government decided we needed that day. Here are the 10 school lunch classics that still make grown adults think of the simpler times.
10. Salisbury Steak
Remember, that oval patty of ground meat was swimming in brown gravy and pretending to be steak. Well, it had a texture of meatloaf and a flavor of salt and mystery. They were served alongside those concrete mashed potatoes and some canned green veggies they throw in our plastic trays. It was more of those “fancy” cafeteria foods that somehow made our lunch feel sophisticated as kids.
9. Jell-O with Mysterious Fruit Chunks
For dessert, you’ll always have those colorful Jell-O. Admittedly, the Jell-O itself was fine, but it was seasoned with mysterious fruit chunks that you didn’t know where they came from. Were those peaches or pears? Still, the Jell-O is refreshing enough, especially on hot summer days.
8. Fish Sticks with Tartar Sauce
Friday may be the day of the week when you’ll get fish sticks. These breaded rectangles of fish (?) are golden brown on the outside and mysterious on the inside. It’s a good thing they come in little packets of tartar sauce, which is actually mayonnaise with pickle relish. Remember those breadings that would often separate from the fish? Oh, those were the good times.
7. Mashed Potatoes with Gravy
Cafeteria mashed potatoes came from a box and were mixed with an industrial mixer until they achieved the consistency of spackling compound. The gravy was brown and had a meat-like flavor. Together, they formed a beige mountain on your tray that was bland and strangely addictive. The potatoes could have been used to patch holes in the school walls, but somehow they were also comfort food for a generation of students.
6. Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup
If it isn’t those Jell-O with mysterious fruit chunks, then this would be the “healthy” dessert. Sadly, they weren’t fresh fruits, just cubes of peaches and pears with the occasional maraschino cherry. These fruits were swimming in sugar syrup, served in little plastic cups with peel-off foils.
5. Corn Dogs
The cafeteria corn dog was the definition of processed food, but somehow, we loved them as kids. It’s a hot dog in cornbread batter that is deep-fried and served on a stick. There was something deeply satisfying about eating this snack on a stick that they were always gone first from the serving line.
4. Chocolate Milk
While regular milk was fine, chocolate milk was liquid gold. Served in those small cartons with the annoying triangular spouts that never opened properly, chocolate milk was the reason many kids actually consumed dairy at lunch. It was sweeter than any chocolate milk you could buy at the store, and perfect for washing down whatever questionable protein was on your tray that day. Trading your regular milk for someone else’s chocolate milk was considered a major victory.
3. Canned Green Beans
Those cafeteria green beans came from industrial-sized cans and were cooked until they achieved the consistency of al dente pasta. They were pale and actually tasted like the can they came from. Still, they appear in our lunch trays as a mandatory vegetable. We all learned to choke them quickly or hide them under mashed potatoes when the lunch ladies weren’t looking.
2. Sloppy Joes
The cafeteria’s sloppy joe was a unique creature to us. It’s ground meat in a sweet, tangy sauce that was somehow both too wet and too dry at the same time. Served on a hamburger bun that would immediately disintegrate upon contact, eating a sloppy joe required advanced engineering skills and at least three napkins. The meat mixture had an unnaturally uniform texture, but it was filling enough for school.
1. Rectangle Pizza
The undisputed king of school lunch nostalgia is the rectangle pizza. This wasn’t pizza in any traditional sense – it was a rectangular slice of bread topped with what could generously be called tomato sauce and a layer of cheese that had the consistency of rubber cement. Yet somehow, Pizza Friday was the highlight of the entire week. No pizzeria has ever successfully recreated this cafeteria masterpiece.