History Main / MessOnAPlate

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': In the season 2 episode "Prison", the titular alien lockup facility serves all prisoners nothing but a thin gruel that looks like wallpaper paste and based on O'neill's reaction, smells very unappealing. It apparently tastes all right, but that might just be because he's used to {=MREs=}.

** From ''[[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/2nd-gen-canon/849-dorms-of-our-lives Dorms of Our Lives]]'', the 'carnivore special', which, if not terrible disgusting, is at least strange:

*** It is specifically noted that the main difference in the faculty dining room is not the food itself, but it being plated by the staff for the sake of presentation.

* In ''Disney/SleepingBeauty'', the fairies decide to make a dress and birthday cake for Aurora. Having sworn not to do magic, they quickly start to fumble everything up. The cake is made with ''whole'' eggs (shells still on), is (somehow) layered and iced before baking, and looks like The Leaning Tower of Pisa if it were painted by Picasso. They finally decide screw it and fix everything with magic.

* In the ''Series/OuterLimits'' episode "The Sentence", the food served at the prison consists of unappetizing goop that comes out of an automatic dispenser. To add insult to injury, cutbacks to the prison's budget have resulted in the machine malfunctioning and not even properly dispensing food.

* In the ''Series/OuterLimits'' episode "The Sentence", the food served at the prison consists of unappetizing goop that comes out of an automatic dispenser. To add insult to injury, cutbacks to the prison's budget have resulted in the machine malfunctioning and not even properly dispensing food.

[[folder:Music]]
* Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" has one verse about dealing with the intersection of this and the usual wares of a LethalChef: "I don't care what these people think I'm just sittin' here makin' myself nauseous with this ugly food that stinks!"

[[folder:Music]]
* Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" has one verse about dealing with the intersection of this and the usual wares of a LethalChef: "I don't care what these people think I'm just sittin' here makin' myself nauseous with this ugly food that stinks!"
[[/folder]]

* The curry dish that Nao Sadatsuka from ''Manga/ShokugekiNoSoma'' made for the Fall Classic prelims looks and smells like dirty sewers, but it's actually very delicious, and is the first dish from the batch to score 80s (until then, the average scores had been 30s).

* In ''Discworld/FeetOfClay'', Vimes suspects Vetinari is being poisoned by something inside the palace so he sends out for a Klatchian takeaway for him on the rationale that "they can't poison all the food in the city". Vetinari's reaction is to StabTheSalad and ask Vimes "did someone already eat this?"

* Poutine evokes this, both in appearance in name -- apparently descended from a French-Canadian term for pudding. It's been described as "looking like someone threw up and left it in the sun", but it tastes pretty good. It consists of French fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy. ''Chips and gravy'', to British eyes, although many Brits brought up on chip shop culture see nothing wrong with this whatsoever and consider throwing cheese on top to be an interesting innovation.

* In ''Film/BetterOffDead'', the mother is spooning grey-green goo (with raisins!) directly onto Lane's plate. He pokes it with his fork and it crawls away.

---> Tanya was just sitting down now, with what was apparently her second tray of breakfast. Even she had to ogle at what Nana brought to the table\\

** Meals at the Academy itself vary greatly in quality, despite having several expert chefs on the cooking staff, in part because of the volume served daily (with 600 teenaged students, several of whom are epic {{Big Eater}}s), and in part because of the need to accommodate some students with radically atypical nutritional needs (such as live animals or odd metal supplements). While there are usually some excellent dishes available (and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis), the majority of it is standard cafeteria fare, served on steam trays in staggering quantities ("You name it, there was fifty pounds of it somewhere on that long line").

** Meals at the Academy itself vary greatly in quality, despite having several expert chefs on the cooking staff, in part because of the volume served daily (with 600 teenaged students, several of whom are epic {{Big Eater}}s), and in part because of the need to accommodate some students with radically atypical nutritional needs (such as live animals or odd metal supplements). While there are usually some excellent dishes available, the majority of it is standard cafeteria fare, served on steam trays in staggering quantities.
---> ''You name it, there was fifty pounds of it somewhere on that long line.''
** Things take a dark turn for ShelteredAristocrat Ayla during the renovation of the main cafeteria, as the staff had to make do with an older kitchen that was in serious disrepair. The results stand in stark contrast to the FoodPorn in most of the other Phase stories - usually even the daily menus include some things which are a cut above the usual cafeteria fare, and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis.

---> ''There were enough scrambled eggs to fill four warming trays, each of which would cover a computer desk. There was enough bacon and sausage to make the domestic pig go extinct throughout New England. There were slices of ham ranging in size from ‘delicate eater’ to ‘dinner for one tiger’. There was a swimming pool of coffee, in a series of coffee urns the size of hipbaths. There was an enormous spread of fresh fruit. There was a bakery’s worth of rolls, muffins, sweet rolls, biscuits, croissants, and tea-rings. You name it, there was fifty pounds of it somewhere on that long line.''
*** Things take a dark turn for ShelteredAristocrat Ayla during the renovation of the main cafeteria, as the staff had to make do with an older kitchen that was in serious disrepair. The results stand in stark contrast to the FoodPorn in most of the other Phase stories - usually even the daily menus include some things which are a cut above the usual cafeteria fare, and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis.

** Meals at the Academy itself vary greatly in quality, despite having several expert chefs on the cooking staff, in part because of the volume served daily (with 600 teenaged students, several of whom are epic {{Big Eater}}s), and in part because of the need to accommodate some students with radically atypical nutritional needs (such as live animals or odd metal supplements). Things take a dark turn for ShelteredAristocrat Ayla during the renovation of the main cafeteria, as the staff had to make do with an older kitchen that was in serious disrepair. The results stand in stark contrast to the FoodPorn in most of the other Phase stories - usually even the daily menus include some things which are a cut above the usual cafeteria fare, and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis.

** From ''[[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/content-menu/stories/163-ayla-and-the-late-trevor-james-goodkind Ayla and the Late Trevor James Goodkind]]'', Ayla's experience with airplane food:

It could take several forms -- maybe it's collapsed into an indistinct brown or grey glop in a bowl. It would be a misshapen mound that vaguely looks like a cake. Random tentacles and [[EyesDoNotBelongThere eyes]] could be mixed in. If it's a cake, expect the decorations to be something out of the wildest imagination of a NightmareFetishist (whether or not the cook is actually one). The appearance of the dish is no indication of its taste, and the most common outcome of this trope is that the food is actually delicious. Those wary of the dish at first may even find it OrgasmicallyDelicious when they get up the courage to try it.

** Meals at the Academy itself vary greatly in quality, despite having several expert chefs on the cooking staff, in part because of the volume served daily (with 600 teenaged students, several of whom are epic {{Big Eater}}s), in part because of the need to accommodate some students with radically atypical nutritional needs, such as live animals or odd metal supplements). Things take a dark turn for ShelteredAristocrat Ayla during the renovation of the main cafeteria, as the staff had to make do with an older kitchen that was serious disrepair. The results stand in stark contrast to the FoodPorn in most of the other Phase stories - usually even the daily menus include some things which are a cut above the usual cafeteria fare, and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis.

** Meals at the Academy itself vary greatly in quality, despite having several expert chefs on the cooking staff, in part because of the volume served daily (with 600 teenaged students, several of whom are epic BigEaters), in part because of the need to accommodate some students with radically atypical nutritional needs, such as live animals or odd metal supplements). Things take a dark turn for ShelteredAristocrat Ayla during the renovation of the main cafeteria, as the staff had to make do with an older kitchen that was serious disrepair. The results stand in stark contrast to the FoodPorn in most of the other Phase stories - usually even the daily menus include some things which are a cut above the usual cafeteria fare, and Ayla has a special deal with the chefs to get even better treats on a semi-regular basis.

** From ''[[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/2nd-gen-canon/849-dorms-of-our-lives Dorms of Our Lives]]'', the carivore special, which, if not terrible disgusting, is at least strange:

\\

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* In an episode of the classic paramedics drama ''Franchise/{{Emergency}}'', the heroes save the life of a celebrity chef, who rewards them with an autographed copy of his latest book. When they later try to put together a dinner for the rest of the crew at their station using the book, they swiftly realize that they did ''something'' wrong and that dinner is ruined. They dump everything they were cooking into a single pot in order to hide the evidence. Just as they're taking it out back to dump it, the fire crew comes back and assumes dinner is ready. Despite having an odd gray color and the consistency of paper mache paste, the "stew" is universally deemed fantastically delicious by the other fire fighters, and the crew expects it to be made again in the future.

* Poutine evokes this, both in appearance in name -- apparently descended from a French-Canadian term for pudding. It's been described as "looking like someone threw up and left it in the sun", but it tastes pretty good. It's cheesey fries with chicken gravy on it, for our friends south of the border. ''Chips and gravy'', to British eyes, although many Brits brought up on chip shop culture see nothing wrong with this whatsoever and consider throwing cheese on top is an interesting innovation.

* Poutine evokes this, both in appearance in name -- apparently descended from a French-Canadian term for pudding. It's been described as "looking like someone threw up and left it in the sun", but it tastes pretty good. It's cheesey fries with chicken gravy on it, for our friends south of the border.