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Oct. 11, 2016
Well, they reimagined again. After causing a total campus meltdown last year, Packed: Dumplings Reimagined is back. The fast casual, organic, locavore, yuppie, globalist fusion restaurant caused majorred waves last year after opening. Students, like myself, dreamed that Packed would offer greasy, cheap late night drunk food. When it turned out that Packed just offered 10 dollar dumplings filled with Cioppino or Goulash or whatever, the entire campus was furious. Look, imagination is a powerful tool. Reimagination is even more potent., Packed had plainly misused their magic. When I went home for the summer, I was inconsolable.
However, But upon coming back to Hyde Park this quarter, I realized Packed looked s… different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but this is definitely not the Packed I’d grown to know and resent. So, I went to check it out. T
The minute I stepped into the New Packed, I knew that something was up. This Packed didn’t have pictures of farms on the wall! How was I supposed to know where the hell this food was from?????
After calming down, I decided to venture up to order at the counter. The menu was almost in a whole different language and all the items were from one cuisine rather than nine cuisines like the old Packed. This seemed kind of racist to me, to be honest. “I’ll take two cemitas dumplings,” I told the cashier. She seemed confused, but I get it. When you work for a restaurant like Packed that changes its menu every week, things can get pretty confusing.
The dumplings came to my table and they were huge and not even closed. It looked like a sandwich almost. Wow. Packed reimagined the dumpling … as a sandwich. I considered the concept as a took a bite. The meat was juicy. The avocado was smooth. The Oaxacan cheese had a salty bite. I spit it out. It was then it totally dawned on me. THIS WASNISN’T PACKED AT ALL.
I had to get out. This was too much. I started to cry. “Where am I?”, I screamed. “You’re in Cemitas Puebla!” a worker told me. I’ve taken enough Spanish to know what “pueblo“ means. TOWN. So puebla must means female town. I was in a FEMALE TOWN dedicated completely to CEMITAS. A whole fucking town! I immediately had so many questions: Who is the mayor of this town? Who lives in this town? Do they have a post office? Also, what the fuck happened to Packed????
Anyway, the cemita was pretty good!
