At the end of a discreet driveway between Eliot and Kirkland, partially obscured by a bevy of hospital-white delivery trucks, lie two stainless steel doors. Any student awake at 9 a.m. would have to be fully caffeinated to notice the unobtrusive loading bay, but FM photographer Laura C. Settlemyer ’05 and I are in possession of directions and know where to go. Not quite caffeinated ourselves, we stand among the idling vehicles, waiting for what promised to be a no-holds-barred tour of the Harvard University Dining Services’ (HUDS) central kitchen facility.
Out from the steel doors pops Andy Allen, the executive chef of the HUDS Culinary Support Group (CSG), who leads us through the loading dock and down the stairs into a place that could be mistaken for a modest industrial facility.
Situated beneath Kirkland and Eliot, the Culinary Support Group facility is an underground complex of offices, tunnels, prep floors, refrigeration rooms, industrial oven units and cutting counters. If Henry Ford had a child with Betty Crocker, the kid would be in hog heaven here.
Inside the narrow hallway, employees rush by, swiping in their time cards and giving Laura and me skeptical looks—Laura’s camera and my open notebook are telltale signs that we’re a bit out of place. The entry dead-ends into a wider corridor, which stretches a quarter mile in one direction, providing access to Leverett. That’s not today’s Yellow Brick Road, however—we turn the other way, past offices crammed into tight corners and down the hall into the main area.
Here, loading palettes and crates are stacked neatly along the walls. Allen, sporting chef’s attire—but sadly, no hat—escorts us past miniature forklifts, speaking over the bustling noise of the kitchen. We get amicable waves as we work our way past folks preparing gallons of tuna salad and corn salad in vats that look like enormous Tupperware. Yards of vegetables are lined up neatly on twenty-feet steel counters, ready to become salad fixings. King-Kong-sized industrial mixers and pumping devices churn away in the background. This ain’t your house kitchen—it’s the meat and bones of HUDS.
The CSG kitchen was designed in 1999 to centralize parts of the dining system that were once very separate. It is here that the bulk of the preparation is done for soups, salads and marinated foods, as well as for the “Dash” foods sold in the Greenhouse. These prepared dishes then travel to House kitchens via refrigerated trucks to be re-heated “as close to the point of service as possible,” says Allen.
Our next stop on this subterranean tour is a conference room that doubles as an office. Among the papers and cartons that were scattered on the wooden table sit five industrial packets of Jell-O, a dead giveaway that this wasn’t a typical corporate boardroom, but a place where food is paramount. The use of the table as a makeshift filing cabinet suggests that even those on the business side spend most of their time in the actual kitchen.
That’s also where Allen has brought his own expertise to bear. During his tenure as executive chef, he has brought food safety technology to the fore.
Allen, who worked for more than twenty years in hotels and restaurants before coming to Harvard, is currently the only certified research chef employed by an American university. A veteran of classes on the science of food preparation, Allen shows that he took good notes with CSG’s commitment to “blast chilling.” Contrary to gut reaction, “blast chilling” does not involve dynamite or liquid nitrogen—the process entails quickly freezing a prepared dish in cold-water tanks to ensure freshness and inhibit bacteria growth.
But food safety isn’t the only arena in which funky new machines have come into play. “Instead of having a chicken marinate for two days,” Allen says, “we can marinate 500 pounds of chicken in 15 minutes” in what resembles a stainless steel bingo hopper. Allen kindly asks us not to photograph the remnants of raw chicken inside. We oblige.
Munch With Masters
We then accompanied Allen and his colleagues into one of the prep rooms for an executive tasting session. One production manager from each on-campus kitchen had been invited to taste and rate dishes being developed for regular production. Entrees, soups and sauces had been arranged neatly on the table, steaming and ready to be scooped up. Allen distributed evaluation forms to the managers, asking them to rate on the basis of visual appeal, flavor profile (whether its temperature and flavor match its name), texture, authenticity and holding qualities (basically, how chicken pot pie looks when the pie part comes off).
Some of the managers took a connoisseur’s approach to the event, sampling with light bites before clearing their palettes and continuing to the next dish. Others took a more real-life tack and dug right in, munching on White Bean Stew, Moroccan Stuffed Peppers, Chicken Verde and the crowd favorite, Mussel and Carrot Soup. We opted for the second method.
“The Tomato Rice Soup is good, but it needs to be redder,” announces Martin Breslin, the excecutive chef for residential dining. “More salt in the cream of spinach soup,” he confides to me. I make a mental note to do so the next time I’m in the kitchen.
Though there is more eating than talking, Breslin takes a break to emphasize yet again CSG’s favorite trope—the seasonal menu. Allen says that students should expect “fresher, lighter” dishes (and Chickwiches) in the spring, as opposed to the heartier stews (and Chickwiches) of the winter months.
One of the most anticipated (and risky) dishes on the table was the Beef Bobotie. Resembling Hamburger Helper, the dish is surprisingly light and sweet, combining beef, cream and egg into a casserole-like creation. While Allen hopes that Beef Bobotie will hit Annenberg’s metal trays this spring, it must still pass the final test in a gamut of trials—a deciding taste-test.
The Beef Bobotie has actually come a long way already. After discovering recipes, the CSG team puts together its own version, outlining necessary ingredients and adjusting for more “mainstream tastes.” The dish is prepared, and Allen sends ingredient requests to his procurement department. The recipe then must pass multiple tasting sessions, after which adjustments are made, and, finally, the requisite ingredients are added to HUDS’ on-site foodstuffs collection, which is comprised of more than three thousand items.
After the tasting, Allen introduces us to more of his pet devices, including the 150-gallon mixers with pneumatic pumps. Allen twists opened a valve, and sixteen ounces of Beef Bourgignon slosh into a plastic bag. Allen retracts a clamp, sealing the bag, and laterals it to Kim Hannon, CSG’s executive sous chef, bringing the brown mixture one step closer to the infamous cooling tank.
From the tank, the delightful beef will probably make its way to one of the many fridges, which easily outsizes a Mather single. Like the Lewis and Clark expedition, this foray into the unknown is also fruitful. Never before had we seen a six-foot stack of campus favorites like Crimson Chili and New England Clam Chowder in sixteen-ounce bags, nor had we previously encountered mango salsa, which will most likely be served with a seared mahi mahi on an upcoming Hawaiian cuisine night.
Laura and I, a tad sleepy from our full stomachs, are led up a narrow gray stairwell. A white door opens, and we are in the Kirkland dining hall, facing a few late-morning diners.
The door slams behind us, and one student turns to look. But he’s too late to catch a glimpse.
