Ferris Booth Commons made the bold decision to offer a “Seafood Boil” at the made-to-order station a few weeks ago. The “Seafood Boil” is a dish that became increasingly popularized this year on TikTok and has been a star of the online “Mukbang” scene, a genre of online videos where creators eat for the camera. While the dish was certainly a bold choice for Ferris, it was met with largely positive reactions, the line for the dish stretching back past the hot table and into the seating area. Based on this overwhelmingly positive reaction, a recent release by Columbia Dining has announced that the dining hall will begin a new initiative entitled “Mukbang Mondays,” where every week, Ferris will offer a dish popularized on TikTok as a Mukbang food. Dishes we may see are Trader Joe’s soup dumplings with what CU Health Services is calling “a borderline-dangerous amount of sauces and toppings,” onion boils, and Bukdak ramen noodles. They have even teased some sweet options, such as something they are calling “beautiful desserts…in LA.”
To test this bold new initiative, Ferris held a test run with a select group of students last week. The Spectador talked to some of those students:
“I mean, the food was super good! But I kind of thought the Mukbang Monday thing was just because the food was from TikTok, not because…they want to make Mukbangs.”
“I loved the Buldak! I was a little weirded out when the CU dining person who gave it to me took out their phone and started recording me eating it…and I was even more weirded out when they stopped recording and told me to slurp more next time? But like, the ramen was really, really good so…”
“Are these videos being posted? Like, yeah, the Onion Boil was fire, but I was housing that shit, and I looked up and three CU-dining staff members were videoing me, and they had like…scary smiles on their faces. I think the Mukbang fame might be going to their heads…please, please let my family go! PLEASE!”
