There seems to be little justification, at least at present, for instituting a standardized menu. Master Bullitt has rightly pointed out that the manager of an individual kitchen would lose his initiative in menu planning and experimentation. More important, the small, indendendent kitchens provide a testing ground for new recipes, dishes, or combinations.
Single Menu for All Houses
But the pleas of the Masters will delay the day of standardization only slightly. A single menu would be a logical extension of the controlling web which penetrates all parts of the Dining Hall system. All menus--from the Central Kitchen, the Union, Dunster, Adams, Harkness, Kresge, etc.--must be approved by the Department. Purchasing for every kitchen is handled by a single agency, which commands lower prices through its bulk purchases. And most important, the Dining Hall Department is pressing an all-out effort to combat the "psychological" statement that the food differs from one kitchen to another. "Exactly the same food is served in all the dining rooms, and any claims of difference between meals in one House and in another simply are not true," Tucker claims.
The omnipresent dollar squeeze also determines, to a very large extent, what foods can be served. "Cost considerations are not the main factor involved in menu planning," the Dining Hall director states, "but they play a very important role in our considerations." Expensive meat cuts at dinner will be counterbalanced by less costly foods served at other meals--the cost of a roast beef dinner may be offset by goulash, chop suey, or some other inexpensive dish.
Poor Public Relations
In addition to budgetary considerations, the Dining Hall Department is hampered by poor public relations. The Student Council evaluation of the College dining halls, written by D. Dwight Dogherty '59, deemed the lack of publicity as the greatest problem of the kitchen authorities. Dogherty suggested hiring a full-time public relations director, but this suggestion, although aimed in the right direction, has definite drawbacks. The wages paid another official in the hierarchy might better be spent in research or in sauces for the turkey.
Student apathy largely prevents the Dining Hall Department from fully satisfying the undergraduates it serves. Few people ever bother to visit the Central Kitchen, the main bakery, or the various House pantries. But the opportunity is there, and the kitchen administrators welcome visitors. Tours through the food preparation complex--an enlightening experience to say the very least--will be given any group that contacts the Dining Hall management in advance. Members of the Student Council roamed through the kitchen this Fall, and most of them expressed amazement at the problems which the Dining Hall Department faces as a matter of routine. Greater encouragement of visits forms one method by which the kitchen authorities can bulid up a reservoir of good will and student understanding.
Student Suggestions Welcome
The dining hall authorities continually affirm their desire to please the student-customers, their captive patrons. Suggestions from undergraduates are welcome--in fact, Sunday night's blueberry pancakes were suggested by a group of Lowell House members. Other indications of likes and dislikes are considered. "We found the Student Council poll very helpful in determining undergraduate preferences and tastes," Mr. Lane claims. Mutton, which received a very low rating on the poll, has appeared only rarely on menus this year; on the other hand, the more popular entrees have tended to appear with monotonous regularity.
But communication between undergraduates and kitchen administrators exhibits, unfortunately, a one-sided, negative characters. Each dining hall supervisor has a comment sheet to fill out after every meal; space is provided for student reaction to the menu served. However, few people ever trouble to register positive comments with supervisors, so certain dishes, by lack of negative comment, are repeated again and again.
Without student encouragement, the Dining Hall Department has full justification for not experimenting extensively with new dishes or combinations. More surveys might help the situation somewhat, but the initiative for kitchen-undergraduate rapport must come from the students themselves. House committees might consider polls or tours as worthwhile activities, and undergraduates should not hesitate to suggest changes and give opinions about the food. For $590 per year, any Harvard student certainly has the right to complain or praise, to suggest or condemn--but very few use this privilege.
The day-by-day operations of the Dining Hall Department alone illustrate a striking degree of coordination brought by years of experience. Take the Central Kitchen as an example. Serving nearly 6,000 meals per day, the Central Kitchen, jammed under Kirkland House, is a veritable beehive of activity from 1 a.m.--when baking of breakfast rolls begins--until well into the evening with the serving of dinner.
Menu planning is a long, involved task, starting as much as two months before the meal is served. Proposed menus must receive the approval of the director of the Department, and must be planned so as not to overstrain the production facilities. Baked potatoes and roast pork, will not usually be served together, since the various kitchens simply do not have sufficient oven capacity for such a load.
Centrality poses many problems, in addition. Food must be transported far from the Central Kitchen, and then reheated on pantry steam tables before serving. Of course much savour is lost with the cooling, reheating, and subsequent sitting in the steam table or on the serving line. It is significant that the plans for the renovation of the Leverett dining area include proposals to prepare more food directly in the pantry. Leverett residents, at the tag end of the tunnel, have often suffered with less palatable food then other Houses due to the great distance from the Central Kitchen. Centrality intrinsically lowers the quality of served food, since reheated dishes can never taste as well as food brought directly to the serving table from the kitchen.
Outmoded design drops the efficiency of the Central Kitchen greatly. For example: approximately 2,000 gallons of milk are consumed daily in the Central Kitchen and its five connected House kitchens. However, there is no cold storage area large enough to hold this amount of milk, so deliveries must be made daily. Much manpower is wasted in cross-haulage between various storerooms--delivered foods may stay in one cooler for two or three hours until the next shipment arrives and then must be shifted to one of the two other small cold storage areas.
The designs of the Quincy House dining area and of the revamped Leverett pantry indicate some of the future alterations which will eventually be undertaken in all the Houses. Quincy plans feature a serving line separate from the dining area, so that much noise is shut off from the tables. When the Leverett dining hall is reopened in November or December, the serving line will occupy part of the present pantry.
To keep pace with the times, the Dining Hall Department is likewise "exploring the possibility of redesigning other House dining areas." Plans have been tentatively drawn for Eliot House, and other studies will commence soon. The Central Kitchen itself will not expand in the near future, since the ninth and tenth Houses will have independent kitchens, but it may be partially reconstructed.
Much maligined and little praised, the Dining Hall Department lacks an adequate voice among the students. Yet, considering the problems of spiraling costs, demands for higher quality, and somewhat inadequate facilities, the College kitchens do a more than satisfactory job. Despite the general student railery, two-thirds of Harvard undergraduates rated the food "good"--a major achievement for institutional cooking. The kitchens cannot rival Mother--but neither could Mother serve 2 1/4 million meals per year