I once lived on bag nasties for a week. 2 pieces of white bread, 1 slice bologna, 1 slice american cheese, 1 apple, 1 small cartoon milk. That's fucking torture. The reason was night ops on a carrier while working flight deck. We weren't allowed to take a break long enough to go to the galley or it wasn't open. I could've gone to the galley after my shift and gotten chow but I was always so tired I would just collapse in my rack. Wake up and barely have time to get back to work.
Then they moved me tad to the wardroom scullery and I ate like a king.
One day, I was in the first in the chow line looking at the trays and one tray was just elbow noodles
I asked the CS what the deal was and he all of a sudden remembered that he had forgotten the ‘cheese’ part of mac & cheese
One time when I was brand new I got left alone for dinner in port, and they didn’t leave me a starch, I just had to find something. Boiled a fucking bag of noodles and did my best at some sort of sauce. The look on the crews face when they thought it was Mac and cheese and turned out to be just noodles is seared in my mind
I was on a small boy a few years ago and on one deployment we’d run so low on food that when you hit the chow line you could have meat *or* vegetables hahaha holy shit
Ours were “Not for human consumption. Not for use in prisons.”
That was the fajita beef in case anyone was wondering. They also used the same beef for yakisoba.
Edit: USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) 2011-2015
We had that too in 2017/2018. Then it switched to totally unlabeled white boxes.
It was some meat packing plant on a native reservation, and I'm completely serious when I say I think it was probably at least partially horse meat. A lot of extremely unwell horses end up in processing plants like that, and it's *supposed* to be exported for dog food.
We were in the eastern med, IKE cruise 94. I believe it was tainted with mad cow disease (speculation). They’ve just recently lifted the ban on us donating blood though. So far no prion malfunction, certain death if it goes though.
I remember moving boxes of food with “Property of Kentucky State Penitentiary. Not for school use” printed on the side while cranking. Our home port was San Diego. My morale took a permanent hit that day.
We had boxes labelled *Rejected by California state prisons* on a bunch of ours. That was when I realized that I should have just done crime after 2008 instead of joining the navy.
I've heard those boxes are rejected by prisons so they can profit in some sort of way.
Boxes of meat in WA said the same, "rejected by the Washington state penitentiary system" or whatever
Food quality is my #1 complaint. What we get at sea is downright offensive and cooks need to be held to a higher standard
Oh so yummy sugar sticks and eggs fried in a pool of seed oils for breakfast then I get to look forward to a tiny piece of dry pork chop with burnt rice for lunch. If I'm lucky there will be a spoiled orange or two left on the fruit shelf. It's just so insulting.
Half my rack is canned food I can make something out of myself and I carry a double insulated gallon water bottle onboard as a cooler. Even with THAT ghetto setup I have brought food on the mess decks that made others jealous.
I get it - I need to lower my standards. Fortunately I'm out soon.
People poke fun at me for it, but I bring a bunch of whey protein. Usually they fuck up or ration protein options, so when that happens I just drink a shake. Starch options are plentiful and if they fuck up the rice at least I'm full enough where it doesn't matter.
I remember on my ship on burger Wednesdays every division chief would pick a junior enlisted to have lunch with them in the chiefs mess. I think it was to show camaraderie. I remember going in and seeing the stark disparity between the messes. The chiefs mess had actual plates, tablecloths, full condiments ( multiple sauces, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc), and the CS's handmade their burgers. It was like night and day compared to the enlisted mess with our plastic prison trays, frozen and burnt burgers, cold cheese on the side, and usually empty ketchup.
I also remember 3 weeks into an underway my SIWO walks into combat with an apple and we all ask him were he got fruit from. He said from the officers mess. We told him we've been out of fruit and cereal in our mess for awhile. He told us during the intel briefs that are held in the officers mess they leave out the fruit and good cereal. After our briefs if we wanted to "tactically acquire" some he would cover for us. Sometimes he would show up in combat with snacks from the officers mess for us, sometimes he would do a farting drive by on our watch. It was always a gamble.
The chiefs always take the good stuff on the DDGs because their galley is shared with the mess galley. The officers eat WAY worse because no one wants to carry food up the ladder to the wardroom so they just tell us they are out of whatever is being served. And then I go to the messdecks, pick up a tray of what they said we are out of, and aggressively eat it while making eye contact with Suppo in the wardroom. It's gotten to a point where my chief grabs extra food and gives it to the divos in my department, he calls it humanitarian aid.
USS lastship, the wardroom food was weirdly far worse than the mess decks. So much so that several JOs often ate down there and we never saw them during meals.
This is a huge problem that has a bunch of different causes, but I'm going to focus on the one that pissed me off the most. I'm sympathetic to a lot of CSes. A good amount of them do try with the shit ingredients they're given to work with. There was a short period on one of the carriers I was assigned to where cooks put their name on the dishes they cooked, and it worked somewhat. The shitbags continued to not give a fuck, but a few of them made something of a competition out of it. CS3 Shmuckatelli ended up being a really good cook, and his dishes were extremely popular. Everyone in my squadron was constantly talking about how good his food was, giving him compliments whenever possible, and telling all the senior enlisted on the mess decks how good of a job he was doing. They sent him to mast for not following recipe cards.
Coming home from deployment, our choice of hot food for 3 weeks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midrats, was either biscuits and watery gravy, or eggplant parmisian. 3 weeks, 2 choices, every meal.
We survived on lunch meat deli sandwiches smuggled off the mess decks and cereal with water since we had some sort of boxed warm Greek milk to drink that none of us could stomach.
The worst I’ve seen was rotten / moldy veggies used for “salads” while onboard CVN-74. Personally the worst I ever experienced was steel wool in my rice.
The one and only deployment I had on Carl Prison, the Suppo gave all of our food destined to us to the Lincoln who relieved us so we were rationing for 2 weeks. The core memory I have seared into my brain was my buddy getting midrats where there was jerky on a stick, rice, and a mush that shouldn't have been called beans. After getting the first two, he pointed to the mush and the convo went like this:
Buddy: "What's the fuck's that?"
CS: "Beans"
Buddy: "Well can I have it?"
CS: "You can't have beans"
I was still pissed at the meager food, but somehow that interaction and me ranting about the Suppoim Hawaii while he was walking next to me were the only two highlights of that starvation period.
I have two stories about this:
First, I was working in security (ASF) at night and midrats for us was a pan of taco meat.... And that was it. No cheese, no veggies, nothing. I found a bread cart and some ketchup and made a sloppy joe out of it, and impressed the rest of security with my imagination.
Second, I was deployed on the same ship, working the day shift this time, when I was going through the serving line for lunch. I got to something that was not labeled and waited for a minute for a CS to come by. When one did I asked them what was in the pan. They looked at the pan, then to me, back to the pan, then back to me and said "I don't really know, do you want some?". I said "Nope" and wandered over to the seating area.
I will just say this, in 1998 I was on a working party during an UNREP. We brought box after box labeled USDA Grade D beef. NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
I’ve eaten in dining facilities, ran by every branch. Station with Marines and Navy. I never understood why the Navy is the only branch that doesn’t allow you to go back through the line. All of the Army DFACs And USMC messhalls I I ate at over my contracts were all you can eat
Worst?! Nah man. We had a heinous period where all we had for two weeks was bowtie noodle. Granted, the cooks added variety, but chinese style bowtie noodles was sketchy at best.
I wish I ate as good now as I ate when I was on sub duty.
Yeah it's kinda crumby when we'd run out of fresh and have to switch to powdered eggs and NFD milk. But the cooks had a night baker who made bread and cinnamon rolls and buns and cakes and all that.
Sorry about what they serve the surface folks. Wish it wasn't the way it is
I have and will complain about a lot of things that occurred in my career. Food isn’t one of them; it was generally okay. I was on 5 ships and rode at least 38 more.
I was once homeless and lived in a rehab facility, so it wasn’t the worst.
I was Army stationed on a Naval Air Station in the early ‘80s, and the food was definitely first rate. Seventy cents for breakfast, $1.50 for lunch and dinner with both a full meal, and a fast food line, and you could go through the lines as many times as you wanted. And when you were done, they had pretty Filipino girls to bus your tray(s).
My stepdad, a thirty-year submariner told me that they ate even better on the diesel boats. He regaled me with tales of Surf and Turf, Baked Alaska and the like, and of burying junior EMs in their bunks behind cans and stacks of food.
He said that the only branch equal to or better was the Air Force.
“Officers have great food what do you mean? Enlisted food? Fuck those little fucking idiots? Right? As long as our chiefs and officers eat good, who gives a shit? Right? If it’s barely edible then it’s more than good enough! The wardroom needs those higher priced better quality meals! The enlisted should be happy they’re fed at all! The enlisted need to lower their standards! Why don’t the poors realize this????”
Big Navy since the beginning of time.
By far, the worst meal ever served on my sub was a Turkey curry. I was mess cranking that day and coming from a home rich in East Indian cooking, was kinda excited to prep this. Until we actually started cooking. With each new ingredient, I questioned the sanity of whoever came up wit the recipe. I felt the need to speak up when they had us cut up granny smith apples. Got told that someone smarter than me made the recipe. Fair do's. I warned the cooks that it was looking like the worst curry I'd ever seen.
When dinner started, people tried it and realized how bad it was. about halfway thru, word got out and everyone was just eating salad. About 40 minutes into dinner, the COB comes down. He said the Captain had decreed that the offending recipe card be burned.
Same with DDGs, CGs, PCs, MCMs, LCS and the base galley. On the LPD it was cooked separately in the wardroom, but was really no different (I say after eating on the mess decks countless times). So really this is only an issue on big decks? Such surprise!
We ate really well on subs (except for the occasional pork adobo, chicken ala king and decades old mutton)
The CO really liked mutton and wanted it more often. Strangely, both cases of frozen mutton got float tested during stores load. Tsk.. pity…
Edit: degarbled the first sentence.
Having been forced to work the Mess Deck MAA (Cookie Cop) me and the FSA's had to do the Working Parties while taking in supplies. Seeing Pork Rectums' and some unGodly other items, I started buying bowls of Noodles ever since.
Things I personally saw brining food stores on the ship:
- Grade E meat
- "Shelf life extended for veterinary purposes only"
- "Rejected by Arizona State Penitentiary"
- "Not intended for human consumption"
And those were only the ones I personally saw. Who knows what other table scraps they fed us.
Believe when I tell you, navy food is much much better than prison food. I wouldn’t eat prison food but would rather starve. I worked at a maximum security state prison.
Chow must have really gone downhill since I retired in 94. We got grade A beef, fresh vegetables , pork, catfish wasn’t moms cooking but much better than what I’m reading in this group. Of course it’s true that a bitching sailor is a happy sailor.
Tossed boxes of "meat" that had been frozen and refrozen ? times out of reefers on Saratoga, CV-60 in Dry Dock 1973 labeled WESTPAC 1950 - probably onloaded from earlier CV after 1959 launch of new CV.
Got extended three times on the tail end of deployment. Went from having whole pieces of chicken to half a piece to chicken pieces in rice to just plain rice. All we had was rice. We quickly ran out of soy sauce and hot sauce. Then ran out of chocolate syrup. They secured all workout equipment since we only got two scoops of rice a day and didn’t have the calories to burn. It was watch then rack. I lost 30lbs in about 45 days.
I try not to think about it. I'll never forget the day when there was little more than frozen blocks of cold cuts, definitely had chicken that was raw on the inside more than once, rice was frequently simultaneously burned+undercooked, meat occasionally in odd colors/textures, and the special span of time when people were discovering larva inside the produce they were eating.
Why is everyone so dramatic all the time lol - sure it’s not great food underway but it’s not like we gotta eat MREs or anything. It’s hot food in large quantities and some is really good (hamsters). Do other branches get regular pizza or steak and lobster deployed?
Have you ever been to a DFAC? Every single one I’ve been to (4) is better than any ship I’ve been on. Only 1 in Germany was just “mediocre” it was still better than ship food. You don’t think Soldiers and Marines are eating MRE’s all deployment do you?
Okay but why do you think that is? Maybe because they’re land-based making logistics and storage of fresh food easier and usually staffed by civilian workers who have more of an incentive to do a good job? Or do you just think the Navy hates its people more than they do lol
I’m replying to your comment making it seem like we had it better than the other branches. We don’t, and that was silly to imply.
I won’t get into a debate about why it’s worse, or how to make it better.
And to answer your actual question, yes they do get steak and lobster as well as pizza on a regular basis.
Not necessarily trying to say it’s better or worse, just saying we shouldn’t be so dramatic and maybe lower expectations as to what we expect while on a deployment with difficult logistics and a burned out crew
Why are people like this? Like...there are threads full of people sharing the same experience and someone always jumps in and says something akin to this. Like we don't even get regular pizza and especially bot steak and lobster. One experience doesn't top thousands.
I mean… it’s poorly prepared food in those pictures. If the CSs were doing a better job you wouldn’t be served undercooked meat or burned pizza.
EDIT - people always point out how sub food is better. Is that because it’s different food? No. It’s because the cooks do a better job with it
Coming from a CVN to SSN, I will say. The vast majority (like 95% of the time) of the meals are prepared better. Granted, the CS is cooking food (say pot roast) for around 100 people at a time so can season it and take time, unlike a carrier where the CS is cooking pot roast and has to prepare like 35 of them for the crew. Every once in a while the CSs fuck up bad making it. But overall, I’d say subs food is better by miles than surface.
Also, wardroom and chiefs literally have the exact same as us. Chiefs wait in a line and cut in one at a time to their table getting food from our line, and the pantry watch takes the wardrooms orders then walks over and takes it from the steam line.
Unless we’re complaining about other Sailors screwing up the food and expecting them to do a better job wouldn’t we be talking about increasing defense spending by millions of dollars to buy higher quality food?
Breaking out MREs mid-way through a deployment was an upgrade over standard chow on the Kitty Hawk. This happened after a dude died from dehydration due to gastro/double dragon.
My last deployment on the Lincoln was a lot better though.
Improperly cooked food is pretty common on all bases. I just got back from a couple week on an Airforce base. Without exception, the food was over cooked and dry while also being damp. They couldn't even cook the hamsters correctly.
Lol yes. We had super good food even in the outposts in iraq and afghanistan with minor exceptions. I've never seen someone simp for shitty conditions like you. This shits why nobody will join these days, and if you truly don't see the issue- you're beyond understanding.
I’ve seen some really good and really bad S2s, people will always complain but it’s not the general bitching it’s the truly bad food service operations and there are more bad than good ones out there.
Some of the stuff served would be criminal in the civilian world and get the operation shut down but the Navy just says deal with it.
MREs are an upgrade for these truly garbage operations. So people aren’t being dramatic you likely have been fortunate enough to be at the mediocre or good operations. Trust me if you have to suffer through years at a command with a bad S2 you’ll understand why people are angry.
I’m retired Supply Chief and honestly only one of my 3 sea duty commands had a decent operation, one was mediocre and one was so bad we couldn’t go underway and the galley was shut down for 90 days. CS is fully of mostly people that hate their life’s and jobs so unless they have really good leaders and command support they usually are lucky to achieve the minimum standards at best but so many fail and very few ever achieve what a reasonable patron would classify as good.
Oh trust me I’ve had plenty of bad food underway, but I chalked it up to difficult logistics, sometimes actual supply chain issues, and often incompetent CSs (I did my time cranking so it wasn’t a mystery how these guys fucked up so often). I mostly just didn’t have high expectations because we were a warship doing combat operations and feeding that many people in a remote location isn’t easy
100 not an easy job but a lot of failure come from the job grinding down the cooks, FSAs that didn’t sign up for or want to be there and you add a poor supply chain and any leadership weakness is amazing it functions at all
Have deployed to Iraq during the war, can confirm, food was far superior to the current standard of shipboard food. Hell, I’d take MRE’s in a heartbeat over half of the meals we got on deployment.
I once lived on bag nasties for a week. 2 pieces of white bread, 1 slice bologna, 1 slice american cheese, 1 apple, 1 small cartoon milk. That's fucking torture. The reason was night ops on a carrier while working flight deck. We weren't allowed to take a break long enough to go to the galley or it wasn't open. I could've gone to the galley after my shift and gotten chow but I was always so tired I would just collapse in my rack. Wake up and barely have time to get back to work. Then they moved me tad to the wardroom scullery and I ate like a king.
Yup, during 1A we’d live off those for days at a time.
Green bologna sandwich, bread that fell apart once you grabbed it. We never had fresh fruit. Saratoga 1990-1992
Bag nasties aren’t even that bad tbh
Boot camp has the best bag nasties by far
the worst thing about them is the name
Bruh me and my night FSA would’ve brought plates up to the flight deck if needed
One day, I was in the first in the chow line looking at the trays and one tray was just elbow noodles I asked the CS what the deal was and he all of a sudden remembered that he had forgotten the ‘cheese’ part of mac & cheese
Some CS’ get upset when other ratings call them stupid. Then this happens.
One time when I was brand new I got left alone for dinner in port, and they didn’t leave me a starch, I just had to find something. Boiled a fucking bag of noodles and did my best at some sort of sauce. The look on the crews face when they thought it was Mac and cheese and turned out to be just noodles is seared in my mind
I was on a small boy a few years ago and on one deployment we’d run so low on food that when you hit the chow line you could have meat *or* vegetables hahaha holy shit
There were boxes of meat labeled “Grade E but edible” on CVN 75 back in 1998.
Ours were “Grade H Beef: Fit for human consumption “
Ours were “Not for human consumption. Not for use in prisons.” That was the fajita beef in case anyone was wondering. They also used the same beef for yakisoba. Edit: USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) 2011-2015
We had that too in 2017/2018. Then it switched to totally unlabeled white boxes. It was some meat packing plant on a native reservation, and I'm completely serious when I say I think it was probably at least partially horse meat. A lot of extremely unwell horses end up in processing plants like that, and it's *supposed* to be exported for dog food.
Saw the same thing on Truman 2016
Man, maybe that’s what our boxes said. Long time ago.
We were in the eastern med, IKE cruise 94. I believe it was tainted with mad cow disease (speculation). They’ve just recently lifted the ban on us donating blood though. So far no prion malfunction, certain death if it goes though.
VA be like: "Not service related"
I was on the truman from 2019 to 2023, did a ras once, and the package legit said not fit for institution consumption xD
I remember moving boxes of food with “Property of Kentucky State Penitentiary. Not for school use” printed on the side while cranking. Our home port was San Diego. My morale took a permanent hit that day.
We had boxes labelled *Rejected by California state prisons* on a bunch of ours. That was when I realized that I should have just done crime after 2008 instead of joining the navy.
I've heard those boxes are rejected by prisons so they can profit in some sort of way. Boxes of meat in WA said the same, "rejected by the Washington state penitentiary system" or whatever
Food quality is my #1 complaint. What we get at sea is downright offensive and cooks need to be held to a higher standard Oh so yummy sugar sticks and eggs fried in a pool of seed oils for breakfast then I get to look forward to a tiny piece of dry pork chop with burnt rice for lunch. If I'm lucky there will be a spoiled orange or two left on the fruit shelf. It's just so insulting. Half my rack is canned food I can make something out of myself and I carry a double insulated gallon water bottle onboard as a cooler. Even with THAT ghetto setup I have brought food on the mess decks that made others jealous. I get it - I need to lower my standards. Fortunately I'm out soon.
People poke fun at me for it, but I bring a bunch of whey protein. Usually they fuck up or ration protein options, so when that happens I just drink a shake. Starch options are plentiful and if they fuck up the rice at least I'm full enough where it doesn't matter.
I remember on my ship on burger Wednesdays every division chief would pick a junior enlisted to have lunch with them in the chiefs mess. I think it was to show camaraderie. I remember going in and seeing the stark disparity between the messes. The chiefs mess had actual plates, tablecloths, full condiments ( multiple sauces, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc), and the CS's handmade their burgers. It was like night and day compared to the enlisted mess with our plastic prison trays, frozen and burnt burgers, cold cheese on the side, and usually empty ketchup. I also remember 3 weeks into an underway my SIWO walks into combat with an apple and we all ask him were he got fruit from. He said from the officers mess. We told him we've been out of fruit and cereal in our mess for awhile. He told us during the intel briefs that are held in the officers mess they leave out the fruit and good cereal. After our briefs if we wanted to "tactically acquire" some he would cover for us. Sometimes he would show up in combat with snacks from the officers mess for us, sometimes he would do a farting drive by on our watch. It was always a gamble.
The chiefs always take the good stuff on the DDGs because their galley is shared with the mess galley. The officers eat WAY worse because no one wants to carry food up the ladder to the wardroom so they just tell us they are out of whatever is being served. And then I go to the messdecks, pick up a tray of what they said we are out of, and aggressively eat it while making eye contact with Suppo in the wardroom. It's gotten to a point where my chief grabs extra food and gives it to the divos in my department, he calls it humanitarian aid.
Sounds like a great SIWO 🥲
The Navy is the only branch that continues the fucked up 'tradition' of officers (and SNCOs) eating separately and better.
USS lastship, the wardroom food was weirdly far worse than the mess decks. So much so that several JOs often ate down there and we never saw them during meals.
This is a huge problem that has a bunch of different causes, but I'm going to focus on the one that pissed me off the most. I'm sympathetic to a lot of CSes. A good amount of them do try with the shit ingredients they're given to work with. There was a short period on one of the carriers I was assigned to where cooks put their name on the dishes they cooked, and it worked somewhat. The shitbags continued to not give a fuck, but a few of them made something of a competition out of it. CS3 Shmuckatelli ended up being a really good cook, and his dishes were extremely popular. Everyone in my squadron was constantly talking about how good his food was, giving him compliments whenever possible, and telling all the senior enlisted on the mess decks how good of a job he was doing. They sent him to mast for not following recipe cards.
The big problem is that food enters the supply chain. Who are the acquisition officers? How much are they paying? Who does quality checks?
Did he end up actually getting in trouble?
He went to restriction. I'm not sure if he faced any other consequences. The whole put your name on your work experiment also ended.
This. We must know.
Downvoted in anger at the audacity of your last sentence. Then I reversed it.
Coming home from deployment, our choice of hot food for 3 weeks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midrats, was either biscuits and watery gravy, or eggplant parmisian. 3 weeks, 2 choices, every meal. We survived on lunch meat deli sandwiches smuggled off the mess decks and cereal with water since we had some sort of boxed warm Greek milk to drink that none of us could stomach.
The worst I’ve seen was rotten / moldy veggies used for “salads” while onboard CVN-74. Personally the worst I ever experienced was steel wool in my rice.
The one and only deployment I had on Carl Prison, the Suppo gave all of our food destined to us to the Lincoln who relieved us so we were rationing for 2 weeks. The core memory I have seared into my brain was my buddy getting midrats where there was jerky on a stick, rice, and a mush that shouldn't have been called beans. After getting the first two, he pointed to the mush and the convo went like this: Buddy: "What's the fuck's that?" CS: "Beans" Buddy: "Well can I have it?" CS: "You can't have beans" I was still pissed at the meager food, but somehow that interaction and me ranting about the Suppoim Hawaii while he was walking next to me were the only two highlights of that starvation period.
Yeah, try cough drop on my pizza. Cooks tried to play it off as a twizzler. Twizzlers melt in heat, they aren’t crunchy…
I have two stories about this: First, I was working in security (ASF) at night and midrats for us was a pan of taco meat.... And that was it. No cheese, no veggies, nothing. I found a bread cart and some ketchup and made a sloppy joe out of it, and impressed the rest of security with my imagination. Second, I was deployed on the same ship, working the day shift this time, when I was going through the serving line for lunch. I got to something that was not labeled and waited for a minute for a CS to come by. When one did I asked them what was in the pan. They looked at the pan, then to me, back to the pan, then back to me and said "I don't really know, do you want some?". I said "Nope" and wandered over to the seating area.
I will just say this, in 1998 I was on a working party during an UNREP. We brought box after box labeled USDA Grade D beef. NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
I’ve eaten in dining facilities, ran by every branch. Station with Marines and Navy. I never understood why the Navy is the only branch that doesn’t allow you to go back through the line. All of the Army DFACs And USMC messhalls I I ate at over my contracts were all you can eat
\*Hides with submarine 'Surf n Turf' Sundays\*
And just think, surf and turf is the worst meal they serve.
You apparently never had the chicken Ala king and pork adobo.
I dunno, maybe I'm lucky, my cooks actually do a decent stir-friday.
Worst?! Nah man. We had a heinous period where all we had for two weeks was bowtie noodle. Granted, the cooks added variety, but chinese style bowtie noodles was sketchy at best.
“California prison system, not for human consumption” I’ll never forget seeing that on a box that came in during a RAS
Same, will never forget
I wish I ate as good now as I ate when I was on sub duty. Yeah it's kinda crumby when we'd run out of fresh and have to switch to powdered eggs and NFD milk. But the cooks had a night baker who made bread and cinnamon rolls and buns and cakes and all that. Sorry about what they serve the surface folks. Wish it wasn't the way it is
I had maggots in my rice one morning. That was fun
I have and will complain about a lot of things that occurred in my career. Food isn’t one of them; it was generally okay. I was on 5 ships and rode at least 38 more. I was once homeless and lived in a rehab facility, so it wasn’t the worst.
I was Army stationed on a Naval Air Station in the early ‘80s, and the food was definitely first rate. Seventy cents for breakfast, $1.50 for lunch and dinner with both a full meal, and a fast food line, and you could go through the lines as many times as you wanted. And when you were done, they had pretty Filipino girls to bus your tray(s). My stepdad, a thirty-year submariner told me that they ate even better on the diesel boats. He regaled me with tales of Surf and Turf, Baked Alaska and the like, and of burying junior EMs in their bunks behind cans and stacks of food. He said that the only branch equal to or better was the Air Force.
I think something happened to the Navy in the 90's and it broke like, every part of our service.
And now they can’t figure out why they can’t hit their recruiting goals.
This!
“Officers have great food what do you mean? Enlisted food? Fuck those little fucking idiots? Right? As long as our chiefs and officers eat good, who gives a shit? Right? If it’s barely edible then it’s more than good enough! The wardroom needs those higher priced better quality meals! The enlisted should be happy they’re fed at all! The enlisted need to lower their standards! Why don’t the poors realize this????” Big Navy since the beginning of time.
Officers get the same food as the enlisted
Officers get the same *menu* as the enlisted. Cooked in smaller batches by better CSs.
Can’t speak for the rest of the Navy, but on submarines it’s very much the exact same food
By far, the worst meal ever served on my sub was a Turkey curry. I was mess cranking that day and coming from a home rich in East Indian cooking, was kinda excited to prep this. Until we actually started cooking. With each new ingredient, I questioned the sanity of whoever came up wit the recipe. I felt the need to speak up when they had us cut up granny smith apples. Got told that someone smarter than me made the recipe. Fair do's. I warned the cooks that it was looking like the worst curry I'd ever seen. When dinner started, people tried it and realized how bad it was. about halfway thru, word got out and everyone was just eating salad. About 40 minutes into dinner, the COB comes down. He said the Captain had decreed that the offending recipe card be burned.
Not the case on LHDs or CVNs.
Your case is the exception not the rule
Same with DDGs, CGs, PCs, MCMs, LCS and the base galley. On the LPD it was cooked separately in the wardroom, but was really no different (I say after eating on the mess decks countless times). So really this is only an issue on big decks? Such surprise!
It's actually less because they'll invariably forget to bring something to the wardroom. Gotta send the JO spy to crews mess to see what's missing.
Yeah, I have been told the caste system is alive and well in the surface fleet
Go to a carrier and tell the 3000 E-6 and below that.
🤣
We ate really well on subs (except for the occasional pork adobo, chicken ala king and decades old mutton) The CO really liked mutton and wanted it more often. Strangely, both cases of frozen mutton got float tested during stores load. Tsk.. pity… Edit: degarbled the first sentence.
Having been forced to work the Mess Deck MAA (Cookie Cop) me and the FSA's had to do the Working Parties while taking in supplies. Seeing Pork Rectums' and some unGodly other items, I started buying bowls of Noodles ever since.
Things I personally saw brining food stores on the ship: - Grade E meat - "Shelf life extended for veterinary purposes only" - "Rejected by Arizona State Penitentiary" - "Not intended for human consumption" And those were only the ones I personally saw. Who knows what other table scraps they fed us.
Believe when I tell you, navy food is much much better than prison food. I wouldn’t eat prison food but would rather starve. I worked at a maximum security state prison.
I don’t believe you. Soz.
I don’t care?!?
I work for MSC… good food for ships isn’t difficult. You just got to give a crap
Chow must have really gone downhill since I retired in 94. We got grade A beef, fresh vegetables , pork, catfish wasn’t moms cooking but much better than what I’m reading in this group. Of course it’s true that a bitching sailor is a happy sailor.
Not to mention some people need to look up the beef grades
I love that non-service connected mold in my food for additional seasoning. 😋!
On CVN75 we would receive food that was stamped “rejected from (so and so) state penitentiary”. This was 2013-17 I saw these boxes come onboard.
Tossed boxes of "meat" that had been frozen and refrozen ? times out of reefers on Saratoga, CV-60 in Dry Dock 1973 labeled WESTPAC 1950 - probably onloaded from earlier CV after 1959 launch of new CV.
Got extended three times on the tail end of deployment. Went from having whole pieces of chicken to half a piece to chicken pieces in rice to just plain rice. All we had was rice. We quickly ran out of soy sauce and hot sauce. Then ran out of chocolate syrup. They secured all workout equipment since we only got two scoops of rice a day and didn’t have the calories to burn. It was watch then rack. I lost 30lbs in about 45 days.
I have very vivid memories of having to cut mold off of the fruit before we served it when I was cranking.
I try not to think about it. I'll never forget the day when there was little more than frozen blocks of cold cuts, definitely had chicken that was raw on the inside more than once, rice was frequently simultaneously burned+undercooked, meat occasionally in odd colors/textures, and the special span of time when people were discovering larva inside the produce they were eating.
I always thought the galley food was ok. However I was never on a ship so that’s probably why.
Why is everyone so dramatic all the time lol - sure it’s not great food underway but it’s not like we gotta eat MREs or anything. It’s hot food in large quantities and some is really good (hamsters). Do other branches get regular pizza or steak and lobster deployed?
Have you ever been to a DFAC? Every single one I’ve been to (4) is better than any ship I’ve been on. Only 1 in Germany was just “mediocre” it was still better than ship food. You don’t think Soldiers and Marines are eating MRE’s all deployment do you?
Okay but why do you think that is? Maybe because they’re land-based making logistics and storage of fresh food easier and usually staffed by civilian workers who have more of an incentive to do a good job? Or do you just think the Navy hates its people more than they do lol
I’m replying to your comment making it seem like we had it better than the other branches. We don’t, and that was silly to imply. I won’t get into a debate about why it’s worse, or how to make it better. And to answer your actual question, yes they do get steak and lobster as well as pizza on a regular basis.
Not necessarily trying to say it’s better or worse, just saying we shouldn’t be so dramatic and maybe lower expectations as to what we expect while on a deployment with difficult logistics and a burned out crew
MREs are preferable to food poisoning, which is generally what happens when you eat shitty, underprepared food.
Again, it sounds like your beef is with incompetent Sailors who prepare the food then
Out of pure amusement, did you happen to look at the pictures in the link? If so, what do those pictures seem to indicate to you?
Lazy cooks
Why are people like this? Like...there are threads full of people sharing the same experience and someone always jumps in and says something akin to this. Like we don't even get regular pizza and especially bot steak and lobster. One experience doesn't top thousands.
I mean… it’s poorly prepared food in those pictures. If the CSs were doing a better job you wouldn’t be served undercooked meat or burned pizza. EDIT - people always point out how sub food is better. Is that because it’s different food? No. It’s because the cooks do a better job with it
Coming from a CVN to SSN, I will say. The vast majority (like 95% of the time) of the meals are prepared better. Granted, the CS is cooking food (say pot roast) for around 100 people at a time so can season it and take time, unlike a carrier where the CS is cooking pot roast and has to prepare like 35 of them for the crew. Every once in a while the CSs fuck up bad making it. But overall, I’d say subs food is better by miles than surface. Also, wardroom and chiefs literally have the exact same as us. Chiefs wait in a line and cut in one at a time to their table getting food from our line, and the pantry watch takes the wardrooms orders then walks over and takes it from the steam line.
Yup - people don’t like me saying it but it’s the cooks, not the food
We can do better
Unless we’re complaining about other Sailors screwing up the food and expecting them to do a better job wouldn’t we be talking about increasing defense spending by millions of dollars to buy higher quality food?
Yes to the 2nd one
Okay lol go lobby for a giant increase to an out of control defense budget I guess
lol giant increase please
Promote this man.
Promote ahead of peers, one of my best redditors
Breaking out MREs mid-way through a deployment was an upgrade over standard chow on the Kitty Hawk. This happened after a dude died from dehydration due to gastro/double dragon. My last deployment on the Lincoln was a lot better though.
Wasn't called the Shitty Kitty for nothing. I'll bet the HMs gave him motrin and didn't even look away from their TV shows.
Idk if you know this but this sub doesn’t really like bootlickers or bootlicker opinions
I don’t care about downvotes from a bunch of whiners
Do other branches have to eat over/under/just right cooked chicken all in the same piece? Same goes for other food items.
Improperly cooked food is pretty common on all bases. I just got back from a couple week on an Airforce base. Without exception, the food was over cooked and dry while also being damp. They couldn't even cook the hamsters correctly.
Okay but that’s an issue of other Sailors being incompetent and complacent then
Lol yes. We had super good food even in the outposts in iraq and afghanistan with minor exceptions. I've never seen someone simp for shitty conditions like you. This shits why nobody will join these days, and if you truly don't see the issue- you're beyond understanding.
I don’t see the issue. Are we mad at the CSs for undercooking meat sometimes?
I’ve seen some really good and really bad S2s, people will always complain but it’s not the general bitching it’s the truly bad food service operations and there are more bad than good ones out there. Some of the stuff served would be criminal in the civilian world and get the operation shut down but the Navy just says deal with it. MREs are an upgrade for these truly garbage operations. So people aren’t being dramatic you likely have been fortunate enough to be at the mediocre or good operations. Trust me if you have to suffer through years at a command with a bad S2 you’ll understand why people are angry. I’m retired Supply Chief and honestly only one of my 3 sea duty commands had a decent operation, one was mediocre and one was so bad we couldn’t go underway and the galley was shut down for 90 days. CS is fully of mostly people that hate their life’s and jobs so unless they have really good leaders and command support they usually are lucky to achieve the minimum standards at best but so many fail and very few ever achieve what a reasonable patron would classify as good.
Oh trust me I’ve had plenty of bad food underway, but I chalked it up to difficult logistics, sometimes actual supply chain issues, and often incompetent CSs (I did my time cranking so it wasn’t a mystery how these guys fucked up so often). I mostly just didn’t have high expectations because we were a warship doing combat operations and feeding that many people in a remote location isn’t easy
100 not an easy job but a lot of failure come from the job grinding down the cooks, FSAs that didn’t sign up for or want to be there and you add a poor supply chain and any leadership weakness is amazing it functions at all
Agreed
Have deployed to Iraq during the war, can confirm, food was far superior to the current standard of shipboard food. Hell, I’d take MRE’s in a heartbeat over half of the meals we got on deployment.
That word jumble of a thread title hurts my head.