By Jim Duncan CVFDude@aol.com

Nothing's more predictable than complaints about school cafeteria food, so initially we wrote this year's gripes off. But after they intensified, we visited Lincoln High School to see what could have upset so many people so much. Our memories of Des Moines public school (DMPS) lunches are quite pleasant. Graduation from brown bagging in elementary school to hot cafeteria meals at Callanan Junior High still ranks with the greatest upgrades of our dining life. We relished that kitchen's creamed chicken on mashed potatoes, beef and noodles, ham-and-bean casserole and chili. All those standards of our youth lend themselves well to reheating, too. So we didn't understand how DMPS's new Central Kitchen could have caused people to complain about degraded quality. Too bad they don't grade us for naiveté.

Judy Vickre runs the kitchen at Lincoln. She's a bona fide foodie and a veteran of two decades who can recall a lot of changes, but can't remember the recipes we found so endearing.

"Students don't like those old homemade foods anymore. They grew up with two working parents and fast food, so that's what they want," she says.

Fast food is also Lincoln's competition. Sophomores and above can leave campus to eat, and many do, even though lunch break is only 25 minutes. Both students and teachers told us that many younger students also leave, despite rules. You can see taco stands, pizza parlors, sandwich shops and burger joints from Lincoln's front yard, which might explain DMPS's reactionary strategy of offering options that simulate the specialties of those fast-food outlets.

Students have multiple choices that never existed in my era. On our visit, Lincoln offered a pasta bar, a sandwich bar and salad bar. Vickre said that burritos, chicken patties and pizza are the most popular specials. Chicken patties are so popular that, when they are offered, the cafeteria reduces salad output from 1,042 the previous day to just 580. And those numbers reflect patty-preference at elementary schools to which Lincoln redelivers meals.

In the new Central Kitchen system, Lincoln orders prepped foods (e.g., bags of cooked pasta and bags of sauce), and then mixes and bakes the items for a secondary bussing to Moore, Granger, Howell, Jackson and Wright. Students at those schools are restricted to two choices - hence the dramatic drop in salads from one day to next.
"Central Kitchen has changed things for the better. It's standardized. Everybody gets the same thing now. Before, each cook used to make things their own way. We don't waste time now ordering so many ingredients," Vickre says diplomatically.

We coaxed criticism of the new system, but the closest thing we heard was a nostalgic reminiscence about baking.

"Lincoln had the best bakery and the aroma made it such a wonderful place to work," she says.

Half a dozen veteran teachers agreed, some emotionally, that fresh-baked foods were the biggest loss in the new system. Teachers, half of them brown bagging, were far more critical than cafeteria personnel. (We were told that the latter feared "reassignment reprisal.") One first-year teacher did say the "choice" is far better than what he had in high school in Minnesota, but even he added that, "The actual food isn't as good here."

Our pork-cutlet sandwich had been reheated in a confection oven, not a fryer. The bun was rubbery and the cutlet was grainy. It came with the driest, chewiest French fries we have ever tasted, canned corn, a banana and AE milk. Fruit and beverage options were considerable. (Students $1.85; teachers $2.60.)

In the end, we left without seeing the upside to food bussing. The reheated simulated fast foods being offered today can't compete against their franchise joint equivalences on any level - except their subsidized price. The advantages of double bussing are even less clear. And in light of gasoline inflation, we'd bet the new system hasn't been adequately budgeted. CV

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