Canteen.

Now that I’ve worked in 2 academic institutions and studying in another one here in Hong Kong, I think I should be qualified enough to comment on the canteens in each of these places.

The IVE(HW) canteen is a fairly small place, but the food is generally not too bad. Plus the fact that you can settle a meal for less than $20, it is really a decent option for lunch if ever I don’t feel like leaving the campus in the mid-day. That said, I’m not missing the place.

The BU canteen is decent in size, though I’m not exactly sure how the place would hold up during the students’ lunch time because I usually have my lunch at about 1. Space aside, the food is at best acceptable, because they really aren’t good. The breakfast is cheap (comparatively), but since you get what you pay for, the quality isn’t exactly good either. The lunch I had yesterday was about the “best” that I’ve ever had in the canteen – the whole thing was filled with mushrooms! The staff canteen, which I visit about once a week, is slightly better in terms of the quality of the food – perhaps that’s because it’s a staff canteen?

The CityU canteen is about the worst of the lot. The food always look strange, sometimes the food they serve are not even warm as well. My worst encounter with the food in the CityU canteen was when the sauce on my Baked Portugese Sauce Chicken Rice turned out to be just a paste of stuff that I have problem even trying to come to terms with. The steamed rice is usually bad too because they don’t seem to be warm at all. The only thing that perhaps can be eaten would be the roast meat rice, but then again the queue for that is forever long because I think a lot of people think the same way as myself.

Sometimes I really miss home-cooked food, especially when the food outside varies so much in quality and price.