Haunting New Lunch Options Arrive in TriBeCa

Elevated levels of supernatural activity were found at the McDonald’s on Greenwich Street last week. Customers frantically ran out of the restaurant as glass shattered on the floor, bathed in sparkles of sanguine. It is rumored that the one behind this was Stuyvesant’s new headphone-stealing pet ghost Fifi, specially employed by Mr. Moran after he got too tired of chasing children down the Hudson Staircase. The specter was desperately trying to open their prized bottle of Kit Kats when they got bored wandering the Junior atrium. Nevertheless, Mayor Eric Adams had this to say during his press release:

“Upon receiving numerous complaints from paranoid customers in TriBeCa restaurants, but more importantly watching McDonald’s, Vivi’s Bubble Tea, and even Whole Foods’ stock prices take a massive fall after the incident, my administration has decided to permanently shut down all dining establishments in the TriBeCa area.”

In the following days, famed Stuyvesant-adjacent restaurants closed one by one. Ferry’s: finished. Shake Shack: scrapped. Terry’s: trashed. However, the Stuyvesant student body didn’t seem to care all too much, at least until Mayor Adams added the beloved halal carts to his ban list. A record-breaking number of petitions and off-color memes were sent to the Department of Education’s (DOE) inbox, complaining about injustice and extreme stripping of basic humanitarian rights following these developments. These petitions achieved the impossible—they actually made the DOE pay attention to the developing issue, and strangely enough, respond with meaningful change. Stuyvesant students rejoiced until the DOE proposed what would become an atrocious, heinous act: outsourcing food preparation and serving to the Stuyvesant cafeteria.

Even the lunch ladies had doubts about replacing actual, edible sustenance with hastily cut carrots and the signature tasteless school breakfast muffins. Unfortunately, they couldn’t evade the magical DOE sorting hat that split them between the differing restaurants based on their multivariable calculus capabilities and least favorite seltzer water flavor. The DOE went as far as to make some of the restaurant names educational in some way, as exemplified by Downtown Dipoles (formerly Downtown Yogurt) and Little L’Hospital (formerly Little Italy).

When sophomore Fionah Khen walked into McDonald’s (now renamed McDivide’s) hoping to buy a sandwich, she was instead rewarded with an overpriced slab of uncooked meat stashed between two slices of bread. “The chicken was so raw that it looked like it was about to fly into the Hudson,” she said. “When I looked to the sofa corner to try and relieve my taste buds, all I found were stacks upon stacks of boxed frozen, chunky milk!”

Senior Abheek Lath had a similar experience. After a long eight hours of continuous band practice, he tried to regain feeling in his fingers by buying a cup of ice cream from Dunkin’ Donuts, now rechristened Dashing Dividends, but to his surprise the usual delicious ice cream was replaced by some gooey spinach and cheese substance. “Just looking at it made me want to puke. There weren’t even any real donuts, just bagels so hard that they almost broke my teeth. And I’d rather spend 20 more hours drumming than take a bite of those new bread drumsticks.”

Stuyvesant students and staff had their final straw when AP Microeconomics teacher David Stock fainted during class after a student casually told him that the Los Tacos No. 1 (now Ludicrous Theorems) menu was revamped to serve bags of chips and canned corn to put on top, with the only available seasoning being rotten lettuce. Students proceeded to mass protest at City Hall for the return of corporate domination in TriBeCa in a desperate effort to end this terrible nightmare that had descended upon all the food lovers. Little Fifi, however, afraid of the wrath of the Lettuce Eating Club on their quest for better DOE quality lettuce, returned to hiding. If you happen to be on the third floor this Halloween, where the real terror is more outside the building than within, be sure to tell Fifi “hi”… if you can spot them.