Pop-up Catering

For lunch today I went to one of the catering stands on the Sony lot that emerge around lunch time and disappear shortly after. The main reason that I wanted to stop was that they offer employee pricing at five dollars, which, more important that saving me money, just makes me feel cool. There was a choice of Italian sausage (pork or turkey) or a veggie burger. Since I didn’t want to look ridiculous in front of the other intern by picking the veggie patty and since I am a big fan of streaks (devotees will know that I had the turkey burger yesterday), I chose the turkey sausage.

The sausage and peppers were accompanied by a pasta salad, a cookie, and my favorite part of the offering: the “eco friendly cup of water.” The sausage was fairly standard, but suffered from a bit too much bun for the amount of sausage. The pasta had a pesto that returned me to thoughts of my youth and added a nice touch of strong parmesan flavor to round it out. The cookie was standard and the whole thing was slightly better than one should have expected from a pop up catered lunch.

All of this was merely just a precursor to the most important part of the meal, which was of course the eco friendly cup. For a place notorious for use of bottled water, the cup struck me as rather deviant. In addition to being able to read the label, I could feel the reason that this cup was labeled eco-friendly: it was made of corn. As someone from Ithaca, where they always at least pretend to care about the environment, I had learned some important things about corn recycling. While the corn products are compostable, if you were to place it in a regular recycling or garbage can it will act just the same as any piece of plastic. Only when brought to a special recycling center can one reap the environmental benefits of the compostability. The lack of special receptacles led me to believe that the cup, like so many things labeled environment, was really just for show.