Enobytes Wine Blog

A while back I was reading the San Jose Mercury newspaper and came across a column about the food that was being served at some of the high profile Silicon Valley employers like Yahoo, Cisco, and Novell. It has been reported that the food was good enough for vendors and contractors to make up excuses to visit these locations around lunchtime. It was an impressive article and it got me to thinking about my own journey through institutional food.

As a child my family moved around quite a bit; in fact, in the third grade I went to three different schools that year. We never lived anywhere more than a couple of years so growing up I saw more than my share of cafeterias. Good ones, bad ones, even great ones. It wasn’t until we moved to Memphis when I was in the tenth grade that I remained somewhere more than two years. What passes for a meal at most public school cafeterias these days would have been thrown in the garbage at the schools I ate at as a kid?

Tulsa and Talequah Oklahoma, Fort Smith, Van Buren, and Walnut Ridge Arkansas - these towns employed some of the best southern cooks, producing the tastiest lunches I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. Oh sure there were disaster dishes, usually something new that had not been showing up on their tables at home for the past two hundred years. When we moved to Memphis in 1970, the commercial cafeteria scene there was competitive. Most southern cities usually had a couple of national chains and a few local and even ethnic cafeterias.

My first professional culinary employer was the Robilio family located at 910 Vance Ave. in Memphis; they opened in 1903. They had quite a reputation for quality, everything including all breads and desserts were made on premise. We offered handmade fresh ravioli and real mashed potatoes on the cafeteria line every day and all beef products were USDA Prime beef. The Robilio’s also owned a supermarket next door and sold only Prime beef; around Memphis they held the same status that Whole Foods, Zabar’s, Zupan’s and Dean and DeLuca’s does today. With that said, I think I might launch into this episode of “I DON’T BUY THAT”.

Although I started my youth working in culinary, I departed from this occupation for many years beginning with my military service with the USAF in the early 70’s. In 1988 I was desperate for any type employment, and managed to land a job through a temp service with a Canteen account at Raytheon in Waltham, MA. It was a research facility so Canteen treated the account with kid gloves. It ran a little different than most of their regular accounts. They had this kid that just graduated from the Hotel Management School at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and he was the essence of what institutional food is still looking for; a balance of choice, quality and cost effectiveness. We made what we knew our customers would buy.

My next experience was with the institutional giant ARA where I sliced off my index finger first digit. I was then told to drive to the emergency room by myself in a manual transmission vehicle and then I was terminated because I would not cook while the sutures healed that were keeping my finger together. Regardless, both of those kitchens made fresh wholesome food that was seasoned and well prepared. At the Newburyport ARA account you were required to tri-fold all omelets without the slightest discoloration. We made great food. Grilling fish for 100 people, you were still required to make cross marks. It was quality.
My stint at Dakota’s in downtown Boston was another experience in corporate food that obtained a fine dining quality. This restaurant was a lunchtime corporate dining facility for one of the country’s leading insurance companies. There was a wood fired grill and exotic game on the menu. At dinner, it operated as a regular restaurant open to the public with a check average in 1991 of $32 per person.

Where are we today with company food? Better, or so far behind it’s embarrassing to call it food?

I have recently worked at the catering operations of Boeing and Intel operated under contract by Eurest and Bon Appetite. I’ve toured (as a perspective “Chef de Cuisine”) the main Microsoft campus operation run by “The Compass Group” Eurest and Bon-Appetite’s parent company - an ex-Kimpton Group alumnus was executive chef. I can tell you the stories from San Jose do not ring true in the Northwest. My experience at the Renton Boeing facility was lackluster; all employees had no interest in food or providing a good culinary experience. The quality of product from burgers to fresh fruit was compromised and reduced to almost inedible status over and over again because nobody cared.

At the Intel Roner Acres facility, I worked a couple of weeks for Bon Appetite. I checked out the company and was impressed with the website that Bon Appetite touted and when on premise they displayed the same information “Farm to Fork” specific local sustainable produce or meat. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy with trust and your level of confidence regarding quality is riding high.

“Farm to Fork” is a very convoluted program that misrepresents the objective and to my knowledge was not effective. My first morning cooking started out with me being told we could not salt the water for Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat, obviously someone with a salt problem had been very vocal, but do you make all other customers suffer through a flavorless product? I think not.

My concern for the safety of the guests was peaked when I observed there was the routine of thawing chicken, beef, turkey and pork, then freezing it again. A habit I would not recommend nor does the Health Department approve of. To make matters worse, that base product would be made into prepared product and put on the line then reheated the day after. Sales definitely suffered from the un-appetizing dried out day before leftovers being offered day after day.

There was consistency at this location; yeah a consistent theme was the mantra of safety. In fact the State Law required break for full time employees consisted of a mandatory safety break where you were not allowed to use the restroom, take a smoke break, get a beverage or make a phone call. You were required to participate in a group safety meeting then immediately directed back to your tasks. Although people hurt themselves on a daily basis they just did not report it due to the long-standing safety record of no one being hurt for four or five years. The longest of any Bon Appetite account. The Executive Chef and the General Manager of these accounts usually obtain huge bonuses for safety records and other performance based criteria. They practice an unusual culture of sanitation through the wearing of gloves. The insane rules about touching food with your bare hands leads to a whole lot of cross contamination. Employees regularly touched work surfaces, door handles and prep sink water handles while wearing gloves that just touched raw chicken and fish. They might have noticed they had contaminating fluids on their hands if they could feel it.

Enough of that; we are here to talk about the food. Eurest at Boeing had nothing that was even remotely edible so the rest of this is about Intel, Roner Acres.

Lets start with the 100% NATURAL BEEF BURGER it is a quality product to start with. Killed to a fault under the flame of the grill cook when it could have come off 5 minutes earlier (way too many people wait for an overcooked burger) without wasting the Oregon quality beef.

The ethnic food was even stretched thinner by definition. Asian offerings were Americanized to the point of no recognition. The burrito station had a tortilla steamer, the true sign of non- authenticity, Spanish rice had neither cumin nor cilantro because they were the Chef’s least favorite spices - in fact it was just plain white rice. On the day they made pasta to order it was the worst food I have ever slung out of a station, non-seasoned sauce, over cooked pasta slopped onto a plate with no pride and no love. Do not even get me started on the Panini grilled sandwich station. A grilled sandwich with cheese should have cheese on both sides. Do you not grill both sides? Then there was the Buffalo Chicken Panini, a kitchen sink of leftover chicken product (some breaded, some grilled) mixed with blue cheese and celery. The suggestion of maybe adding a condiment to all Panini recipes, like a roasted red pepper aioli to the fresh mozzarella sandwich, or whole grain mustard on roast pork with sweet and sour red cabbage was heralded as a stroke of genius. I would bet they are still serving the same dry tasteless food. Why do you go most of the way then drop the ball? The biggest surprise was the lack of consistent recipes, there were no recipes ever presented to me in the two weeks I worked there for any of the product I produced.

A career at a good company should include the opportunity to eat good food if they are paying for good food before they cook it. Why the masses at these facilities don’t stand up and say “Enough is enough”, we pay for good food we should get good food.

And what is worse? The total lack of quality combined with the lack of hospitality at Boeing’s Eurest facilities? Or the pretense of quality and fake it (because nobody can tell the difference) until you make it attitude at Bon Appetite? I despise both and to that I say, “I don’t buy that”.

What ever happened to honest food we made at Robilio’s? It takes just as much time to make bad food as it does to prepare great food (MDME).

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