Harvard Dining Services Director Michael P. Berry has been honored with the national Silver Plate Award as the outstanding food-service professional at colleges and universities.

The award is the third national honor Dining Services has earned this year.

In the fall, Dining Services won the first-ever Visionary Award for its innovative menu. Earlier this winter, Dining Services won the 1996 Ivy Award for the best noncommercial food service in the country.

"It's the triple crown," Berry said in a statement. "This has been a good year."

Criteria for the Silver Plate Award include outstanding management, marketing, human resources, industry and civic participation.

The International Foodservice Manufacturers Association gives Silver Plate Awards in each of nine categories; Berry won the colleges and universities division.

He will receive the award at the National Restaurant Show, held in Chicago, in May.

Berry was nominated for the Silver Plate Award by John Birchfield Sr., a former Silver Plate winner who runs a consulting company that specializes in college and university food services.

In a statement to the Harvard Gazette, Berry attributed his success to his reluctance to embrace fast food.

"College food services over the last 10 years have gone the way of fast food," Berry told the Gazette. "We've tried to say, 'Wait. For Harvard, that wouldn't work; it wouldn't meet the academic and social mission of the University."

"Instead," Berry continued, "we have focused on service, more and better options and better quality food--like providing fresh ingredients and ethnic selections and not coming in with mystery meat. We take our goal seriously every single day and I have spoken about it all over the country."