Making Meals for Hungry Students

By Cassie Ferguson

Gazette Staff

In the central bakery beneath Eliot House, the ovens are on, it smells like cookies, and the radio's belting out the '70s tune That's The Way (I Like It). Racks of baked blueberry bread pudding stand against one wall, and sheets of white-frosted cake cover the counters.

In a corner, a doughnut-making machine, freshly scrubbed, sits ready to be turned on at 5 a.m. the next morning to crank out another day's 120-dozen donuts. In the oven, 18 cakes are rising. All those baked goods will go fast, explains Michael Miller, executive chef for University Dining Services. The students eat well.

While the bakery winds down at 11 a.m., other parts of the kitchen are running full steam. They're just about to serve lunch, which includes sandwiches, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, veggie burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, vegetarian bean burritos, two soups, stew, three varieties of pizza, and falafel. On the side, students can also munch French fries, broccoli spears, Black Forest bars, oatmeal cookies, frozen yogurt, 18 cereals, and anything from the salad bar.

Today is not a day for chicken fingers -- by far the favorite food of undergraduates, who'll munch up to 2,500 pounds of the crispy-coated poultry in one meal. The secret to the chicken fingers' success? "We use fresh chicken and cook it right before they're served," says Miller. Unfashionable foods? Lima beans and beets tend to be less popular, he concedes.

"We serve the same customers almost every day for four years," says Miller. "So we have to provide variety." Keeping 6,635 undergraduates gastronomically happy is a tall order, but Dining Services does everything it can to make that happen.

Miller has collected about 5,000 recipes from books, magazines, trade journals, other schools, students, and personal creations from his more than 20 years as a chef. The cooks still improvise, he says. "Sometimes we get creative and mix and match. We'll do something like chicken broccoli pasta, work on it until we think we've got it right, and try it out on the summer students."

Feeding the masses takes an army of managers, cooks, servers, and dishwashers -- and some enormous equipment. In the main kitchen, steam kettles each contain 40 gallons of soup, vegetable choppers are the size of a kitchen sink, and a new slicer can sliver 100 pounds of meat in an hour. Studio-sized refrigerators and freezers store thousands of pounds of vegetables and ice cream.

Over the past five years, Dining Services has updated many of its kitchen facilities, the most recent being the remodeling of the Adams House kitchen. Changes included creating extra space for serving, new turquoise tiling for the floors and walls, and tastefully arranged lighting. "The right lighting makes food look good," says Miller.

Food appearance is important, says Miller. "We try to do more than just parsley," he says. "If it doesn't look good, they won't put it on their plates." Since each plate can't be arranged individually, the challenge is to make sure the 30th helping from a large steel dish looks as good as the first.

One day the students do have individually served meals is when the Visiting Chef series arrives at their Houses. Then the students dine at tables set with linens, and waiters carry in entrees prepared by a visiting chef from a restaurant of distinction, such as Grill 23, Maison Robert, or Chez Henri.

Dining Services keeps the staff up to date with a culinary training program designed for Dining Services by the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont.

Michael Kann, a chef instructor from the Institute, teaches the staff about everything from knife handling to ordering produce. He's now working on serving details, he says. "You have to put the fresh thyme and tarragon in the dish just before the plate goes on line."

Besides teaching kitchen and cooking skills, Kann also works with employees to improve communication. He says, "The servers are the eyes of the kitchen. If they see they're getting low on swordfish, they have to let the cooks know they'll be needing more."

Miller embodies the spirit of communication in food service work. As he walks through the kitchens, wearing a white chef's jacket, crimson Harvard cap, and a digital thermometer in his pocket, he greets everyone by name and doles out plenty of hugs.

"Our staff members are incredible," says Miller. "They love the students. They're there for them every day."

They're dedicated enough that when the buses stopped running during last year's April Fool's Day blizzard, the staff trudged miles through the snow so the students could eat.

"What strikes me most is how much they care and that it's absolutely universal," says Project Manager Alexandra McNitt.