Article Launched: 07/09/2008 12:00:00 AM PDT
Ted Burke, co-owner of the Shadowbrook and the Crow's Nest restaurants and National Restaurant Association board member, completed a 35-day quest in February to find the U.S. Air Force base serving the best institutionalized food in the world.
Burke, representing the association, was part of the Hennessy Awards evaluating team; he and three others evaluated six national and two international bases -- Incirlik, Turkey, and Dakota, Tokyo.
Among the eight Air Force bases judged, Tyndall Air Force, outside Panama City, Fla., came out on top, due to top leadership and food service, Burke said.
After three days of training in San Antonio, Burke and the others spent a half-week at each base evaluating criteria such as how closely recipes were followed, measuring, ingredients, food, sanitation and quality.
Breakfast items ranging from French toast, pancakes and eggs to dinner items such as stuffed peppers, liver, fish, pasta, chicken, turkey and sometimes steak.
Evaluations started around 5:45 a.m. and went through 6 p.m., starting again at 10 p.m. for the midnight meal. Scoring generally took about two days to complete. Committee members averaged four and a half to five hours of sleep a night with one day off a week to travel.
"Institutional food can absolutely be good, even great," Burke said of the challenges the military faces. "The stereotype of institutionalized food used to be old ladies in hair nets with metal trays. That day is long gone. Today it is very top notch. In fact, some of our Fortune 500 facilities and prestigious educational institutions use food service as a recruitment tool."
The differences, Burke noted, between institutionalized and restaurant food are that institutionalized food is more formalized and less artistic because most cooks don't have a culinary background. Much of the food is pre-prepared in bulk, then brought out to serving lines.
"The Air Force has requirements more strict than in our homes. For example, if leftover food can't be re-used within 24 hours, it's thrown out. My home refrigerator has much different rules. However, the Air Force cannot take any chances because they can't afford to have an entire wing go down that's in charge of defending our country."
Burke said he would gladly represent the National Restaurant Association on the mission again. "First, the people I met were just fantastic, from the highest in leadership ranks to the people who had been in the service for less than a year. Second, each place I went to I got a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I could never duplicate again. Things such as getting to put my hands on an F-22, America's newest fighting plane, while standing on the tarmac alongside the base general, to sharing a two-hour luxury bus ride in from the Tokyo airport with Miss USA." To learn more about the Hennessy awards or how to join an evaluation team go to www.hennessyaward.org. |
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