Brewsterconnections - Brewster Academy

More Enjoyment, Less WaitingWith 30 minutes for lunch on class days, students want to spend as muchof that time relaxing with friends and enjoying their food, not waiting inline for it. With this in mind, there are plans for a new design and flow tothe Estabrook. Eventually the dining hall will be expanded outward ontothe current patio, which will open up the seating area providing more spacefor community dinners and other events. The first stage of the new design,however, will focus on more immediate, efficient service to the students.“For us to get them in and out in 30 minutes, we are creating a brand newkitchen that’s more conducive to the number of kids we have and helpingthem get their meals within five minutes of entering the dining hall,” Dillexplains.Throughout this winter and spring the dining hall will receive a facelift.The servery – the area between the kitchen and the dining room wherestudents select their meals – will eventually undergo a significant layoutchange. There will be duplicate hot and cold service areas, so waitingtime should be cut in half. The area outside the servery, currently home tomade-to-order sub sandwiches and the soup bar, will become an enclosedwalk-through area for beverages and snacks and will remain open andaccessible to students all day. There is already a self-serve express entréeline to help expedite lunch. The dining area will get updated flooring,lighting, and furnishings.Buying Local and OrganicAside from the physical changes, Dill wants to offer students a completeawareness of what they are eating. “We are at a good time for thisawareness because everyone is hyper aware of how food arrives at thetable,” he says. Dill’s goal is to offer the community the best ingredients hecan and to make people aware of how to eat properly.From the CIA tothe EstabrookChris Dill is a graduate of the CulinaryInstitute of America in New YorkCity. After graduation he worked forfour years as a chef de cuisine at Four SeasonsResort in Kona, Hawaii. He then worked as apersonal chef to celebrity clientele at Honuala’I,an oceanfront estate on the Big Island’s KohalaCoast. “It was basically a big hide-a-way for Alist movie stars, and I came with the house,” he explained. Among hisclients: Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette.He also worked for Ocean Sports Hawaii where he was a chef on privatecharter sailboats and whale watch cruises.After 10 years in Hawaii, Dill missed the change of seasons. He movedto Crested Butte, Colorado, and became an executive chef at a mountainlodge where he was a fly-fishing guide in the morning and a sushi chefin the afternoon. He then opened his own restaurant, Suzette’s FineSouthern Cooking, in Fort Collins, Colorado, but after working for “astraight solid two years” with hardly a day off he went corporate. “I gotall the sushi bars up and running at Kroger grocery stores.” Then, it washis wife Chani’s career (she’s a professor at St. Anselm’s College) thatbrought him east and to Brewster Academy.“This is the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve got it all.”“Before making purchases I ask a lot of questions of vendors. I’m lookingfor local [ingredients] and hormone-free meats and produce. Where is thisbeef slaughtered? I won’t take it from a feedlot. How far does it travel?All of our beef, pork, and chicken is hormone free and mostly from NewHampshire. Our eggs are from New Hampshire cage-free chickens.”Although buying from local and/or organic sources as much as possiblecan be more costly than non-organic or purchasing meat from distant,large distributors, Brewster has a volume advantage. “Because Brewsteris such a large account, we have a lot of buying power,” Dill says. “We areable to get all these nice organic products at a competitive price that youor I wouldn’t necessarily get.”Even the napkin holders will soon hold some nutritional value. Studentswill see QR codes on the napkin holders, which they can scan to learn thenutritional value of what they are eating or what they need to eat. Dillexplains, “If I’m going to be a ballerina what do I need to sustain myself?”“The focus this year is on awareness, complete awareness of what they areeating. This is what your are eating and this is the nutritional value.”Whether it’s a Tomelet, a specialty salad, a vegetarian entrée, athoughtfully prepared “comfort meal”, or a warm, chewy cookie, the tablehas been set at Brewster and the dining services staff continue to sustainthe community with an abundance of healthy options.www.brewsteracademy.org15