Caf wars: Bacon vs. tofu

Meat vs. vegetarian options tested for tastiness

February 1, 2012

The Hard Knox Café and other Knox dining institutions offer numerous vegetarian food options — but how do they compare to the real thing? TKS tried both to find out which was tastier.

Bacon (Caf/Oak Room)

Veggie bacon (Caf/Oak Room)

Bacon: the stuff Internet memes are crafted from. But veggie bacon is good for only a few things: freaking out your friends when you wave it in front of them or using it to build a (failed) log cabin — both choices are much better than actually eating it. Veggie bacon looks like a freak of nature next to real bacon, with its pathetic attempts to replicate the white strips of fat of real bacon. Yes, veggie bacon sort of tastes like bacon and also like jerky but leaves such a strange aftertaste that bacon lovers might as well dip veggie bacon in baconnaise.

Chicken Ranch Wrap (Grab-N-Go)

Hummus Wrap (Grab-N-Go)

While both are equally messy, surprisingly, I enjoyed the hummus wrap more than the chicken ranch wrap. Maybe it’s my love of hummus or maybe because I was especially hungry that day, but the wrap’s combination of hummus, cucumbers, lettuce and olives was more satisfying than chicken and ranch oozing out of a flour tortilla. The hummus wrap also had the plus of putting those with healthy-consciousness minds at ease.

Garden burger (Outpost Express)

Meat burger (Caf)

The garden burger, compared to a meat burger, looks kind of sad. You can see within its pale, brown patty a hodgepodge of veggies mashed together. Even with its Frankenstein’s-monster-like qualities, the garden burger is not that bad. Its texture is similar to an actual burger minus the corn embedded in the patty. A meat burger has more flavor, but give its hippie cousin a try. I usually eat a garden burger with a few pepperoncini (or banana peppers) and that’s sufficient to inject enough flavor.