It’s lunch hour at Ackerman Union — the culinary hub for on-campus dining. You weave through the bustling crowd and head straight for Greenhouse, the pocket-sized, buffet-style restaurant at the center of the food court. This week’s menu promises Korean cuisine, but one glance — and one bite — into the food leaves you disappointed, doused by a reality far from the culturally authentic dishes you had anticipated. This is a common phenomenon among students dining at Greenhouse, an ASUCLA restaurant that aims to provide healthier options alongside weekly-rotating, themed hot dishes from around the world.
Though the concept is innovative and thoughtful, Greenhouse does not always seem to meet the expectations for their themed foods. While some dishes have authentic flavors and offer students a genuine taste of global cuisine, others feel oversimplified and sometimes Americanized. It leaves students wondering whether Greenhouse is truly celebrating global cuisine — or just borrowing the names. And as the themed menus rotate each week, so does the question: how well does Greenhouse actually represent the cultures it puts on display?
A good place to start answering that is with what ends up on the menu. Greenhouse often plays it safe, relying on Western-familiar dishes that create a one-dimensional view of the cultures it aims to represent. The Thai theme, for instance, sticks to red curry with potato and shrimp instead of exploring everyday dishes like pad krapaw or moo ping, resulting in a surface-level interpretation. This pattern extends to its broader approach to “Asian flavors,” which tends to favor trendy, Westernized picks like Korean cheesy corn rather than showcasing foods people actually eat at home.
This lack of distinction across Asian rotations leads to a sense of sameness, with many dishes sharing similar sweet-and-savory profiles, such as Filipino salmon adobo and Korean short ribs. These offerings could feel more authentic with essential spices or techniques — for example, bay leaves and peppercorns in Filipino adobo or sesame oil and rice wine in Korean short ribs.
But leaning on popular, Western-known dishes is just the beginning. Even once these stereotypical foods make it onto the menu, Greenhouse still struggles with the most important part of cultural cooking: flavor.
As a weekly Greenhouse visitor, I’ve taste-tested cultural rotations from Thai to Mexican to Korean, and the results are wildly inconsistent. For some weeks, a dish comes surprisingly close to the flavors it’s meant to represent (like the pineapple fried rice from Thai week) and other weeks, it just feels more like a sloppy dupe with the cuisine’s name slapped on it. This week’s Korean cuisine is an example of the latter.
Moving past the salad bar, the first “Korean” food I saw was the sesame balls — a red flag right off the bat, since the pastry isn’t Korean at all but a traditional Chinese dessert. Instead of a crispy outer shell and a chewy-gooey center it’s known for, the balls were stale, rubbery and honestly hard to swallow. And from the Korean spiced salmon to the short ribs, the entrées all suffered from the same issue: dryness, muted seasoning and lacking in the bold, chili-driven and sweet-savory flavors that define Korean cooking.
But the most disappointing dish of all was the tteokbokki — the most well-known Korean dish of the bunch, yet somehow the least Korean-tasting. A well-made tteokbokki should be sweet and spicy with umami depth. However, Greenhouse’s version tasted oddly savory with a surprising hint of furikake, a Japanese seasoning that doesn’t belong anywhere near the dish. Even the rice cakes were inconsistent, leaving some pieces bland and others over-sauced.
The inconsistencies continue when it comes to cultural mixing. Rather than presenting dishes true to each culture, Greenhouse leans into fusion creations designed to feel familiar to Western diners. Mexican week, for example, featured three-cheese Mexican lasagna and salmon adobo, neither of which are dishes actually eaten in Mexico. Even the Asian-themed menus blur together, with Thai week featuring Americanized foods like spicy cashew chicken, a dish commonly found in Western Chinese takeouts.
Despite these shortcomings, Greenhouse still stands out as a healthier alternative to many spots on campus that allows for more balanced diets. A forerunning selling point of Greenhouse lies in its weekly menu rotation that enriches the availability and diversity of potential meal choices for students desiring palate novelty. And even if the authenticity isn’t always there, the themed dishes still give students access to comfort foods they might not find elsewhere on campus. For students far away from home, that familiarity can feel incredibly refreshing. Adding to the option availability and customizability of Greenhouse, this semi-circle stretch houses more fixed sections consisting of the build-your-own salad and versatile cold bars that many students appreciate whilst browsing the ASUCLA dining selection. For those who prefer to skip the cultural section options, the cold bars offer a dependable and filling meal alternative with no prominent taste concerns.
It is worth acknowledging Greenhouse’s efforts in incorporating and celebrating international diversity within the crowded UCLA dining scene, as the student population is considerably multicultural. But there’s still room for improvement —especially when it comes to dish selection and how consistently those flavors reflect the cultures they’re meant to represent. While there’s certainly better dining destinations at UCLA for cultural foods in terms of flavor authenticity, Greenhouse presents great practicality and convenience for students craving taste novelty or a dependable salad bar. If looking for a quick, diverse grab-and-go option, Greenhouse could be the ideal candidate, but those seeking truly authentic cultural flavors might need to search elsewhere. So for now, amidst the food truck instability, Greenhouse does the job — but with a university as vibrantly diverse as UCLA, there lies so much promising potential for enhancing our culinary selections.
__
Featured Image Photographed by Asher Nee/BruinLife
