“After eating this, the trash doesn’t look so bad,” claimed Nomick.
Photo by Maria Dhilla
Throngs of hungry undergraduates were greeted by a new sight on Wednesday at Sixth Dining Hall as they discovered the latest addition to the menu from campus sensation Wolftown: the Raccabowl. According to a promotional poster from HDH, the Raccabowl “represents a new step in HDH’s journey to provide students with healthy, high-quality, locally sourced cuisine. After all, what’s more local than our own backyard?”
After the announcement of the new menu item, the Raccabowl seemingly gained instant notability around campus. “It was the new thing. Everyone was so excited to try it. We woke up at 4:00 a.m. just to get in line,” said one student. And try it they did. By noon that day, Mosaic was abuzz with students eager to sample the new bowl as wait times on the Mobile Order app jumped to nearly six hours. Tom Wolf, HDH’s spokesperson for Wolftown, describes the Raccabowl in a promotional video. “At first glance, the Raccabowl looks like any other Wolftown creation, but look closer, and it’s easy to see why it was such a sensation. The bowl is packed with herbs and spices directly sourced from community gardens around UCSD and comes with a generous helping of flavorful ingredients highlighted by a raccoon-themed decorative container.”
“We were very pleased with the initial success of the Raccabowl,” Wolf later said. “Our outreach programs were able to make contact with gardeners all around campus to source fresh herbs, fruits, veggies, and other ingredients for this bowl. And, of course, who could forget the limited edition packaging? Our design teams really guac’ed that one out of the park.” As the lunch rush slowly gave way to the dinner rush, so many Raccabowls had been ordered that the servers hosting the Mobile Order app reportedly caught fire. As a result, multiple Wolftown employees have since described how they were forced by HDH to begin accepting orders via carrier pigeon. “I have no idea how they got so many birds,” one employee describes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all just drones.”
The student body’s excitement soon turned to outrage, though, as one student made a harrowing discovery. “I was just enjoying my bowl,” recounts Leah Bility. “When the next thing I knew, I was chewing on some poor trash panda’s little tail!” As word began to spread about Bility’s discovery, one Biology student conducted an experiment to see if the rumors were true. “I grabbed a sample and headed to my research lab,” recounts Gene Nomick, a fourth year. “When the sequence came back, I was kinda stunned. It was a raccoon. Plain and simple.” An online post by Nomick detailing his findings received nearly 20,000 “OMG” reactions.
By Friday afternoon, wait times had gone back to normal, and the Raccabowl remained an object of notoriety among students. “I was just really disgusted. Like, that was super uncool,” said one third year. Tom Wolf declined a request to comment on the controversy surrounding the bowl, but a statement from HDH confirmed that “The Raccabowl will be removed from the menu by the time we return to in-person learning.” Additionally, HDH will be offering six Dining Dollars and a raccoon-themed “we’re sorry” greeting card to anyone disappointed by their Raccabowl.
