Despite continuing efforts by the school management and the cafeteria contracting company, NineMasters, many students are still unimpressed with the B1 cafeteria. Recently some members of the NYU Shanghai community have found another way to express their dissatisfaction with the cafeteria.

In early February of this year, an unidentified user wrote the first review of the NYU Shanghai cafeteria on Dianping.com, China’s largest restaurant review website. The user rated the cafeteria one star out of five, and the review is as follows:

The greedy cafeteria owner add water into the maple syrup, and my waffle is drowned in the added water in the maple syrup. “黑心商家 枫糖浆兑水 致华夫饼溺水” The review is followed by a picture of waffle soaked in water and an image featuring a distraught anime figure with the caption of “I’m almost rendered speechless” (简直让我说不出话来). It didn’t take long for the review to find its way onto WeChat moments and attain viral status within the NYU Shanghai community. Following this, more people swarmed onto Dianping.com and wrote reviews on the cafeteria. Some of the reviews were written in a humorous fashion:

The food is so horrible that I almost cried [the sentence is repeated three times]. Go to the cafeteria if you want to lose some weight. The cafeteria can subtract two and a half kilograms from your weight in minutes. Way more effective than staying on an apple diet! “难吃哭了 难吃哭了 难吃哭了 想减肥就去食堂 分分钟瘦五斤 比吃苹果还管用”

Get three Chinese dishes for lunch, and as long as one of them contains the slightest trace of meat, your budget skyrockets above 20 RMB. Get a drink and some fruits, and your budget will be further pumped up to more than 30 RMB. The only section which has normal prices is the newly-opened Halal section. But boy, they won’t dare to add more than 3 slices of beef to the 8 RMB soup noodles, let alone the fact that the beef slices are extremely flimsy and no larger than 3 square centimeters. Everyone, this is the cafeteria of a university in Pudong that is struggling in capitalism. 中餐拿三个菜只要有一个粘点肉星分分钟一顿上20，再拿个饮料水果什么的一顿午饭30不是梦=_= 只有新开的清真保持了正常价格的尊严。可是亲，八块钱一碗拉面敢不敢多给几片牛肉，薄如蝉翼就算了面积小于三平方厘米就算了给超过三片会死吗 大家好这里是在资本主义水深火热中挣扎的浦东某大学食堂.

I’m giving a negative review. The menu at the halal section indicates that they have dumplings. When I order dumplings, they turn angry at me, saying that the dumplings were fake; they were special effects [a reference to a recent Jackie Chan meme]. In fact, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE THE DUMPLINGS! You’ll have to wait. Just grab your beef noodles! 差评 兰州拉面区说好有饺子 要点了就凶我 说饺子是假的，是特技，其实他们根 本就没有饺，子 要等的要等的，快点吃拉面吧

Others, however, adopted a more serious tone:

The food is horrible. The fusion of Chinese and Western cuisines should not be the excuse. The fact that the best food in a cafeteria is the Lanzhou halal beef noodles simply can’t be justified. They should get themselves together, reduce the prices, and improve the quality. 难吃就是难吃，不要再找中西结合的借口，一个食堂最好吃的竟然是兰州拉面，真的说不过去，赶快回归正轨，价格降下来，味道好起来。

The cafeteria is really a regrettable development. Few people eat here during mornings and evenings. Despite its great location, people aren’t satisfied with the cafeteria. Many students at NYU Shanghai go to the street barbecue stands instead, and others may prefer the fried noodle stands. Those who have nowhere else to go eat at the FamilyMart. Isn’t that regrettable! 鸡肋鸡肋 食之无味 弃之可惜 虽曰食堂 朝夕食者 往来寂寥 虽占地利 却失人和 上纽之众人 多寄情撸串 抑或炒面 无他去处者 则独酌于全家 岂不悲乎. (this comment is written in classical Chinese)

Most of the reviews on the website are, unsurprisingly, still concentrated on issues such as the variety and the quality of food, the price range, and the service at the B1 cafeteria. It can’t be denied that the cafeteria has improve a lot compared to what we had at the beginning of Fall 2014 semester. However, these reviews still serve as an acute reminder that there’s still plenty of room for improvement for the cafeteria to better serve the NYU Shanghai community. This article was written by Richard Lewei Huang. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Ben Weilun Zhang