All the Right With a diverse menu of innovative, fresh, delicious, and healthy food, HB’s Dining Services team has developed the recipe for satisfied students and faculty.
by Douglas Trattner
Today’s lunch consists of Asian dumplings served with a spicy mango dipping sauce, bowls of piping-hot pho flush with tofu, rice noodles, bean sprouts and fresh basil, and a Buddha bowl brimming with bright greens, whole grains and roasted vegetables tossed in a bold maplelime-avocado glaze. While that might sound like the daily features at your favorite Asian bistro, it is just a typical Wednesday in the Dining Hall of Hathaway Brown. If your recollection of school cafeteria lunches is anything like mine, it likely consists of a depressing loop populated with gems like meatless moussaka, beef macaroni, corndogs, and, hello, Friday!, fish sticks, all washed down with half-pint cartons of chocolate milk. HB does lunch differently. “We serve restaurant-quality food,” explains Torrey McMillan ’90, Director of the Center for Sustainability. “It doesn’t look like school food, it doesn’t taste like school food, and it’s not made with the ingredients of school food.”
Health and Wellness As one of the valedictorians of his graduating class at Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts, chef Nick Keck could be earning accolades at any number of four-star restaurants. Instead, as Director of Dining Services for HB, his daily customers consist of approximately 1,000 Primary, Middle and Upper School students, along with faculty and staff. With his team of 14, Keck oversees a scratch kitchen “where we are bound only by our imagination,” he says. It wasn’t always this way. A decade ago, students in this very cafeteria were loading up trays with the same types
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of premade convenience foods that have “nourished” growing boys and girls for decades. But about that time, a commitment was made to completely overhaul the school’s food philosophy to better align with the core principles of health and wellness, sustainability, culture and community, and lifelong learning. “The philosophy gives us a set of touch points to help direct our decision making around what food we serve on campus, and also to beautify all the different spaces that food comes into our community, so that we can all speak the same language and work toward the same goals,” McMillan adds.
