Andy Allen, clad in his chef’s whites, stands in the cold steel confines of a walk-in refrigerator, clutching a bag of turkey noodle soup while recounting his pursuit of the perfect piece of pasta.

“I spent three years looking for this noodle,” explains the executive chef of the Culinary Support Group (CSG) as he points out the robust cubes of carrot and celery floating in the broth. “I wanted a noodle that would hold its shape in the liquid.”

After an exhaustive three-year search he found it floating in a Swiss soup mix, and persuaded the manufacturer to sell the noodle separately so that he could incorporate it into his stock of ingredients filed away in the CSG kitchen below the brick walls of Kirkland House.

Over the past five years, the CSG has allowed Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) to centralize much of its “wet” food production. While the centralization has allowed for improved efficiency, Allen and other HUDS administrators want to ensure that not only Harvard’s noodles, but also its collection of localized House dining halls hold their shape and flavor. HUDS director Ted Mayer has said he does not want to see the University move towards a system with central dining halls, like many other colleges.

“The reason for the house system has nothing to do with efficiency,” says Mayer.

By centralizing some of its production, HUDS has been able to improve and monitor quality, consistency and efficiency of its food preparation—without compromising House life.

DIRECTING THE KITCHEN

The history of Harvard’s dining system is worth upholding, Mayer says, but the culinary traditions are not.

“The old house kitchens were modeled on the army. That’s where institutional cooking really has its roots,” he explains. “The food they ate then was much more casserole-like, we’re talking meat and potatoes, not nearly as sophisticated as what we eat today.”

When he took over as director of HUDS in 1997, Mayer says he made it his charge to examine the dated physical facilities and brainstorm more than cosmetic changes.

“We needed to take advantage of new cooking technologies,” he said.

By the summer of 1998, Mayer had begun to implement plans for the CSG kitchen to become a central HUDS facility responsible for slicing, dicing and mixing.

HIGH-TECH PREP

Standing in front of a large metal slicer carving its way through semi-frozen chicken, Allen explains the simple logic behind the CSG. “We only make things that make sense,” he says.