Barro’s has always been a staple of our hot lunch and they’re best known for their pizzas as evident by their name, Barro’s Pizza! Typically, I order their pizza; however, I was feeling adventurous and decided to try their pasta. In actuality, I had accidentally ordered the pasta. My careless mistake was actually an angel in disguise as it gave me the idea for another food review.
My dish came in a disposable aluminum foil plate with a white, paper lid. As soon as I propped off the topper, I saw red pasta sauce everywhere with a brown meatball in the center. Think of a completely red circle with a smaller brown circle smack dab in the center. I could barely even see the meatball as the poor fellow was drowning in a sea of sauce. Neglecting the fact that someone had dropped an entire jar of Prego’s, I started to poke around with my fork. I dove under the sea of pasta sauce with my spoon and found the treasure I was looking for, pasta. I scooped out loads of the superfluous sauce and began to finally eat my dish. Firstly, I sampled the pasta and found it was a tad bit mushy after having sat in pasta for god knows how long. Moving on to the pasta sauce, I noticed the flavor was similar to that of Prego’s or frankly any store brand. However, their sauce was extremely tangy and made my eyes squint in response. Additionally, the sauce had a dreadful aftertaste of parmesan cheese. The meatball was a bit on the dry side and was mediocre in the flavor department. Just imagine the most generic Italian herbs and spices and that was exactly what I was tasting. Furthermore, it also had a powerful flavor of parmesan. I quickly realized that this this parmesan tasted eerily similar to something I had before but what was it… Then I realized the culprit, those little packets containing so called “parmesan”. Personally, I dread those packets as the odor and aftertaste repulses my nose and flavor buds. The entire dish looked and tasted like the stereotypic images of pasta dishes that are so omnipresent in American culture. This dish gives validity to such a stereotype and gives a bad reputation for what true Italian food should be. After barely touching my lunch, I tossed my lunch into the garbage where it rightfully belonged. I headed off to my next class and I noticed that the aftertaste decided to tag along. No matter how much water I drank, it refused to disappear. Left with no choice, I decided to munch on 4 Altoid pills while simultaneously blowing out puffs of minty smoke as I waited for the aftertaste to slowly subside.
