Nerding Day: Star Trek Food Review (Patreon)

Science Fiction tends to show a pretty grim picture of the future, partially because it's hard to make a fun piece of media without conflict, so saying "what if in the future everything was awesome!" doesn't make for very entertaining stories. Star Trek is some of the most popular utopian science fiction. It imagines a lot of amazing technology that would improve our lives, from teleportation to holograms you can touch, and obviously also bang, to a scanner that can detect and cure pretty much any disease or infection, including all the weird STDs you get from banging holograms.

However, the one thing all writers and producers of Star Trek from 1966 to today seem to agree will not get better in the future is food. The first food we ever saw on Star Trek were these colorful chunks featured in the original series. MMMMmmm nutrient-dense chunks and a bowl of…brown?

The stereotypical sci-fi future food is pills, which is ridiculous. No one likes taking pills when they're delivering life saving medication. Why would we take them when we're craving a corned beef sandwich? As a species, we've devoted so much of our time and resources to making food taste better; why would we suddenly stop doing that in favor of nutrient-dense cube chunks? Do you think the species that invented the Cotton Candy Lollipop Cupcake M&M Milkshake is ever going to be satisfied by space chunks?

No one is going to space for life if there isn't cheese there. It's not happening. But they're on a space journey, Lydia; they have to eat gross space food like the freeze-dried ice cream our astronauts crave! You might say. That's a good point, nerd; please feel free to pink belly yourself as I explain that NASA is investing millions of dollars in trying to make food for space travelers more appetizing. Even astronauts don't eat astronaut ice cream anymore because it's gross, and we got regular ice cream to space in the 1970s. That's right; astronaut ice cream is a lie perpetrated by the museum gift shop industry.

Our first space food came in powder form from a toothpaste tube. It tasted terrible, and if any of it escaped your mouth, it would float around the ship forever. Early astronauts were constantly bobbing around in a sea of each other's beef crumbs.

Luckily, today's space food has already gotten way better. It even looks like food! And some of it lasts for as long as five years, which, as we all know, was the length of the Starship Enterprise's mission in the original series. So, if Star Trek took place today, right now, they would be eating food that looks like regular food. Not a single chunk in sight, and there's even a cheese spread! Fine, NASA, I'll go to space.

Even when they introduced replicators in Star Trek The Next Generation, they made sure to stress that the food wasn't as good as non-replicated food. So, the food looks like everyday earth stuff, but it tastes like reheated cafeteria quality versions of its usual form.

Whenever alien food is mentioned on Star Trek, it's never because it's delicious. It's usually something like Gagh, a Klingon delicacy which is a plate of live worms that, if they're good, are supposed to wiggle as they go down your throat. There was a whole universe of cuisine for Star Trek to explore, but instead, they just had a lot of alien species eating bugs.

A lot of times, Star Trek uses alien food to show how different an alien species is from humans. They're weird; they eat slugs like the Ferengi, or their weird Bajoran hasperat is too spicy for humans, but sometimes their bizarre eating habits only make them more relatable. When I learned that Cardassians put Yamok Sauce on everything, I was like, oh, that's their ranch dressing! Cardassians are my midwestern brethren. Got it!

Somewhere in the Star Trek universe, there has got to be a species with double our taste buds and a liver that can absorb twice as much fat as ours who've invented some kind of super cheese that will kill us if we eat more than three bites, but two bites will make us pass out from joy. Futurists refer to this cheese sector as The Lactose Expanse.

Even though they love to show how weird alien food is, Star Trek also loves to have aliens in food preparation jobs. The Next Generation's ancient alien bartender Guinan, Deep Space Nine's alien restaurateur Quark, and Star Trek Voyager's Neelix... there's always some alien making weird food, so all the other characters can complain about it. If I were an alien bartender the only human food I would serve is spam. If they whined about it, I'd be like, "oh, I guess all earth food isn't perfect, huh, now shut up and eat your blood soup."

They tried to make a Star Trek restaurant once. It was inside the Hilton Hotel Las Vegas as part of the Star Trek Experience, which ran from 1998 to 2008. They served the kind of exotic future food you could only find in the most exclusive space Applebees. Harry Potter World has butterbeer and every flavor of jelly beans, but Quark’s Bar & Restaurant was like, "Have you ever heard of a quesadilla?"

I've scoured every menu for Quark's Bar & Restaurant across its decade of existence, and the only creativity in it was in the punny names. I could never find the menu that included the Quesadilla, but I deeply understand the naming conventions used for the dish so, I know it had to either be a spacedilla, or had a random character's name slapped in front of it like B'Elanna Torres's Quesadilla. They loved to connect dishes to a character's cultural heritage in a kind of cringy way. One menu had Harry Kim's Pad Thai, even though the actor who played Harry Kim is Chinese American and the last name Kim is typically Korean. They also honored Star Trek's first female captain with a Cobb salad for the weight conscious military leader.

There were some great pun names, though; like the Wrap of Khan. Yes. I'm out of my seat, applauding. Good job, menu makers. For some insane reason, it was later replaced with the grilled chicken Khan salad, booooo. Especially when Grilled chicKhan salad was at least an option. They also served Hamborgers, BBQ Continuum Pizza, The Holy Onion Rings Of Betazed, a Long Island iced tea called the James Tea Kirk, and of course Deep Space Wine. All solid Star Trek puns.

The one thing aliens have that humans consistently like to consume in Star Trek is booze. Romulan ale, Cardassian kanar, and Klingon blood wine are all mentioned as alien drinks that will mess you up, and Quark's Bar and Restaurant relied heavily on alcohol to make up for its uninspired menu. Well, maybe I shouldn't call it uninspired. The menu had a theme, and the theme was "we can only serve what we can steal from the Chili's next door without them noticing."

Their main attraction was a bowl of seven unnamed liquors, cranberry, pineapple, grapefruit, guava, orange juice, sour mix, and grenadine, with a little dry ice on top to create a smoky effect. I have no idea what it tasted like, but the words gasoline fruit salad keep coming to mind. A mix of seven liquors is not a drink. That's a liquid mistake.

Editor's Note: You were right, Liddy!

The vibe for this place must have been wild. All of the Yelp reviews say the drinks were cheap and strong, and they had costumed characters wandering around watching people eat their perfectly normal food. You'd be sitting there chowing down on a plate of spaghetti and a gallon jug of vodka, and a guy in a robot zombie costume would come up to your table and start threatening to assimilate you. I think this picture from Yelp probably sums up the overall atmosphere pretty well.

After you visited Quark's Restaurant and Bar, you would then go on the Star Trek Experience itself, which was a ride that involved a lot of jiggling you around in a room full of screens to make it look like you're in space. So, they filled you up with booze and carbs, and then they shook you. Someone definitely had the job of sadly mopping up regurgitated smorgasboreg enchiladas while dressed like a Klingon.

Surely we can do better than this? Not only the weird Las Vegasy version of Star Trek but the show itself should have better food because science fiction writing is the first step to collectively imagining a better future and I want the food to be even better in the future. Maybe we put some cheese on the Gagh?

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