Arts and Culture Editor, Callum Hynd, goes behind the counter and into the kitchen to find out more about the work that goes into feeding John’s
When we think of building a culture at John’s, what’s the most important factor? Religion? Reputation? Societies? Most valid options, but I would like to make a case for John’s dinners. When is the one time you can expect to find most members of the college? When else do you have a better opportunity to talk to friends you would otherwise never see? Meals in the John’s dining hall are an overlooked and too often criminally underappreciated part of college life (if any fresh are sceptical of this just wait till you have to eat nothing but pesto pasta four nights a week). So for my print piece, I decided to peel back the curtain a bit and try to wrap my head around the sheer amount of dedication, effort and pride that goes into putting food on our plates.
Feeding roughly over 300 hungry students and staff on a daily basis is, unsurprisingly, tough work. A typical day for someone on the kitchen’s day shift will start with a 5:30am rise and a 7:00 clock in. Daily tasks come on fast and must relentlessly be completed, starting first with getting Breakfast on the hob and then storage attended to. Then once Breakfast has been sent out for service there is no time for a rest as Lunch requires: 4 hot main courses, vegetables, the steadfast John’s potato, soup and a traybake! Meanwhile in the background kitchen assistants busy themselves with preparing the full salad bar as well as packed lunches. The aim is to have all this done by 12:00 in order to have a bit of free time and help the evening team with their prep.
And that’s just the morning shifts average day, saying nothing for the evening shifts hectic schedule if theirs a formal on. What absolutely flabbergasted me when I was researching this story was that all this was done as normal but with a reduced workforce! A nasty bug had been going round at the time so all this was being done with often only two people on any one shift.
The work of the catering staff is clearly incredibly physically demanding, but there is also a taxing mental toll while on the job. On top of their previously stated tasks, the executive chef and the morning chef will have to plan and order supplies. As it turns out, John’s kitchen can only at most stock supplies for a couple of days at any one time (given the size of the college, this only really makes sense in hindsight). While menus generally operate off of a three-week rota, changes can often throw plans into the air as formal and special offers come up.
This work is done by the team on a daily basis and is highly demanding, especially when unforeseen conundrums such as illness force some members of the team to work 12 hour practically non stop, shifts. This is something that I sadly believe we students overlook. During our time here we get caught up in our own troubles and too often find ourselves expressing these aggrievements on John’s food and subsequently the staff. Careless comments do make their way round and what seems like throwaway negativity can have far greater ramifications on the catering crews mental health than we’d think.
Nevertheless, despite the long hard hours the staff have expressed to me the sheer pride and joy they receive from making sure that from the start to the end of each term date we are fed and happy.
Image credit: Callum Hynd.
John's Chronicle 