Top 5 best old-school public school lunch items

By Aswad Walker

Kids these days have no idea how good they have it. In some schools, public school lunch rooms resemble high-end mall food courts. At some campuses, kids can leave for lunch and pick up whatever they want. These young whippersnappers can even Uber and Door Dash the meal of their choice to their campus.

Nothing like that was happening back in the day. In those BC-era years, your “choices” were confined to eating whatever was on the menu that day, brown bagging it or not eating at all. We thought the Red Sea had parted when our middle and high school lunch rooms offered an A La Carte line, expanding our eating choices ever so slightly.

Still, there were some items that had us hyped. And here are the top five; those menu items we actually enjoyed. But be warned: if you’re looking for jello to make an appearance on this list, you will be disappointed. So many of my classmates loved them some jello. But is that even a food? Anyway… here’s my top five.

#5: Burritos – Man, “lissen.” When burrito day rolled around, we were all in that line ready to get our food and get busy. I can’t even remember what they served with that burrito, because that was all I was focused on.

#4: Whatever Mom Fixed for You – This is probably the most controversial item on the list, because this could be pretty great or pretty blah. But yo, even a “blah” lunch from the house went down like a five-star meal when your classmates were eating straight garbage. But this entry gets extra cool points because it allowed us the style and profile with our Scooby Doo, Spider-Man or Land of the Lost lunch boxes.

#3: Chicken Fried Steak – For some, chicken fried steak is number one on the list. And I can’t front. I vacillated about giving it the top spot. Because we straight loved us some chicken fried steak… especially me. During my elementary years I was new to Texas and its delicacies. And chicken fried steak, to me, was like manna from heaven.

#2: Chocolate Milk – C’mon now. It’s chocolate milk. CHOCOLATE MILK! We drank that stuff down like it was liquid laughter, because chocolate milk put straight smiles on our faces.

#1: Rectangle Pizza – You have to really be going above and beyond the call of duty to make pizza that kids don’t like. I mean, just the word itself – PIZZA – brings a smile to the faces of kids and adults alike. And I don’t remember anyone complaining when pizza day came. In fact, it was just the opposite. When we knew pizza was on the menu, the hype train was in full effect.