Location: Northwest
Beef teriyaki, Mexican fries, candied sweet potatoes, oven roasted potatoes
Why so many potatoes? I don't know.
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There are some things that you would expect to make you say, "Oh my God!" Maybe your HuskyCT account has a mental breakdown two minutes before your online exam begins, or they find a way to make Arjona less pathetic...without tearing it down and putting it out of its misery forever. I don't know, maybe your friend gets hit by an oncoming UConn bus. Oh my God. What you might not expect to bring about such shock and disbelief is a beef dish from Northwest. Let me tell you, the beef teriyaki is good. A lot of dining hall Chinese food tends to consist of chicken nuggets drowned in overpowering, knockoff versions of the sauces you get at real Chinese joints, but there's nothing even remotely nugget-y about this attempt at an Asian-inspired dish. The meet was thinly sliced, which made it perfectly bite-sized without a knife in sight. The teriyaki was sweeter than most renditions of the sauce served on campus, and it was mild enough that its flavor didn't overwhelm that of the beef. I'm usually not really into the actual flavor of the meat that I'm eating, but maybe I would be if it all tasted like this. The fact that it was perfectly tender and juicy didn't hurt.
Not to be outdone, the Mexican fries, which are basically curly fries with the curl knocked out of them, were also great. I'll admit, there really wasn't any actual Mexican flavor involved, but they sound kind of festive, don't they? The problem is, they looked like they should have some sort of spicy, smokey flavor to them. The fact that they didn't was a little bit of a disappointment. Still, they had that layery, crispy coating that I love, and the potato inside was melt-in-your-mouth smooth. I didn't even have to dip them in ketchup...and that says a lot.
Potato dish number two, the candied sweet potatoes, had me a little bit confused. I don't know if it was because they were the only blatantly sweet thing I had on my plate, or because they were just weird, my first bite made me wonder if something had gone horribly (or maybe wonderfully?) wrong in the kitchen. They just seemed too sweet. I know that sweet potatoes are supposed to be, uh...sweet, but these were a little bit too candied for me. They almost had a chemically altered taste to them. Honestly, I'd probably eat them again, but not too many at once. Did I mention that chewing them brought out a surprisingly tangy flavor? Vegetables are weird.
Every meal (at UConn) has to include some sort of culinary disappointment, so I guess it's a good thing I decided to try the oven roasted potatoes. Something about their complete lack of any color but yellow should have clued me in, but I popped one in my mouth anyway, hoping for at least a mediocre potato experience. Nope. The funny thing is, there was no distinguishable flavor, and the only texture I noticed was, well, potato, but there was an aftertaste. A spicy aftertaste, no less. What?
