Mess Halls are prominently featured in Alien, Aliens, and Alien: Covenant.

Dining in space is the most horrific of all experiences. No matter what NASA and private space exploration companies tell you, advise against it. Our research doesn’t come from Atlantis or Endeavor but from Sulaco, Nostromo, Prometheus, and Covenant, and that’s not saying much.

One thinks that they’re going to get the best meal of their lives after being in a cryogenic sleep for decades. Their “hanger” level will make them think that almost anything edible is good. 

The Sulaco breakfast consists of a can of beer and some cereal. Whole raw spuds are plopped along with orange juice. There isn’t a chef or person of the culinary arts and it shows. One would think that the corporation funding these flights for us would have enough funds to provide a cook. Food in the prisons RI frequents is a step above.

Nostromo’s food is almost on par. The mess hall was a little better and bigger than its predecessor. The rectangle table fit a much larger crew comfortably, but the round table on board the Sulaco was more intimate. The crew, filled with a diverse set of meat heads (both men and women) might know how to smoke a cigar and look good, but they sure as shit don’t know how to cook. Our young staffer wanted to see what it’s like to bypass the first 30 years of her life. We sent her on board only to be awoken with a bowl full of gruel. A site like that makes one want to go back to deep sleep for another 50 years.

It is said that all foods from the cereals to the gruel are enriched with the specific vitamins and nutrients human beings need after being malnourished for a very long time. That’s a gigantic load of bull. Nothing a good Denny’s Grand Slam won’t cure.

Unfortunately, the cheap bastards couldn’t build an appropriate kitchen on board the Prometheus, but at least the round table on Covenant was stocked with cheap whiskey and other sorts of booze. There was mention of meat loaf, but it never came. Covenant wasn’t as sterile or pristine as the other spacecraft, but at least the smell of steel, sweat, and liquor livened up the joint a bit.

These space ships have one saving grace and that’s the corn bread. The corn bread served isn’t your standard dry, Southern, grandma’s corn bread with the cracklins and all that jazz, but consists of a sweeter buttermilk flavor. This symbol is the corporation’s sick sense of humor. They give out one kind of “normal” American food when the rest is utter crap. It’s not even served in a cast iron skillet. One can’t be choosy when they’re light years away from Earth.

To summarize, the food onboard these vessels is probably not supposed to be served to humans, but to something else. The beer is too. Don’t eat or drink it.

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Mess Halls of the Sulaco, Nostromo, Prometheus, and Covenant

Deep Space

ATMOSPHERE: Fit military personnel care more about “what’s out there” then the food in front of them. They don’t even care about it when they’re starving. Maybe that’s how they stay fit.

SERVICE:  Every man, woman, child, and alien for themselves.  

SOUND LEVEL:  Locker-room talk and the occasional choking and screaming for food that goes down the wrong pipe.

RECOMMENDED:  Corn bread

DRINKS AND WINE:  Aspen Beer

PRICES: Your life

OPEN: When the cryogenic chamber opens

RESERVATIONS:  No

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS:  Yes

Wi-Fi:  No

Restrooms: Yes, but they’re small and almost as cumbersome as the toilets inside NASA’s shuttles