What's for lunch at the University of Konstanz?

A fun post for my 34th birthday. Inspired by aiweirdness.com, I trained a text-generating neural network, textgenrnn, on a dataset of meals served at the Mensa (cafeteria) of the University of Konstanz. Some of their offerings are on the creative side anyway: Banane-Lauchsauce, for instance. So I thought the university might be able to save a bit of money by firing the people who design the menus and replacing them with a bot. Long live full automation!

It's a pretty small dataset, so the network struggles to learn what a German word is supposed to look like:

Gemuserauce "Joghurt" Joghurt (olikenkartocild) mit Vollgessauce

Brackarkuschsteet Ketchup | Kase-Artiatiraten | Paprika-Sauce

Kedablacher | Bokentomanela

Frollogghw | Blatter-Fractese | Blattsalat | Blattsalat-Balassauce | Blattsalat

Very often it settles on things that look at least like actual words, but which don't refer to anything (as far as I know):

Frucken | Kaperniger Wurst | Bratkartoffeln | Bratensauce
Gorgarbonn | Kartoffeln | Bratensauce | Romanescogressing | Asia-Quard | Pomulasus | Spatzle
Blattsalat-Balsamicodressing | Kot | Kartoffeln | Salat-Cordmendrondrick
Rindfleischstreinten | Paprika | Petersilienestreifen in Banane
Spatzle Burger | Put-Honig-Senf-Honig-Secktafartoffeln

Cannische Ripslauch | Kartoffeln, Zitronenecke | Brot

Frikaaghurt mit Rahmspinat | Salat-Balsamicodressing | Brot

It also doesn't have much concept of what combinations of flavours work best:

Kartoffel-Gemusesauce | Pudding mit Hahnchenfleisch | Brot
Milchreis | Kartoffeln | Karotten | Bohnen

Pasta | Gemuse | Karotten | Orangen | Bratensauce | Blattsalat-Balsa-Kase-Sauce

Hahnchengeschnetzeltes mit Kirschen

But there are also several dishes that are more than conceivable:

Kartoffelpfanne "Asia" | Brot

Currywurst | Paprika-Dressing | Kartoffelpuree | Brot

Hahnchenbrustschnitzel | Kartoffeln | Bananenjoghurt

Pasta | Schinkenberge | Basmatireis

Schweineschnitzel | Zuckerschoten | Basmatireis

And more that are not outside the realms of possibility at our Mensa:

Tomatenschnitzel

Orientalische Frischkasesauce

Pasta | Apfelmus

Kartoffel-Apfelmus

Chili con Banane-Tomatensauce | Basmatireis

Kartoffelpfanne "Chili mit Kartoffel"

Fruchtige Bratwurst | Pommes frites | Ketchup | Krauterbutter | Brokkolisch | Batailin | Brot

Chili con Carne | Kabeljoghurt mit geriebener Bratwurst | Basmatireis

Lasagne "Cock" | Hahnchenbruststreifen in Bauernwurst | Blattsalat-Balsamicodressing | Salat-Balsamicodressing

One thing's for sure, though: this bot is Swabian born and bre(a)d.

Spatzle | Spatzle | Spatzle | Brot