School Cafeterias Transformed: Where Food and Art Collide

Across the world, especially in places that strongly value education, lunchtime is crucial, as is hiring good teachers or keeping up with the latest classroom technology. Such schools invest in their cafeterias, making them a worthy place for your kid to have lunch. What’s more, the meals served there are also delicious as home-cooked and healthy.

Starting from the chicken casserole, lotus soup, spaghetti and meatballs, grilled cheese sandwiches, rice, beef, salad, and kimchi, there’s a lot that school cafeterias offer. Besides food, school cafeterias nowadays have been a pleasant and inspiring place to be. Here are several school cafeterias transformed into havens filled with art where you can buy food. Read on!

School Cafeterias Where You Can Buy Food From

McKay Elementary School – Beaverton, Oregon

If you live in Oregon, the Eat a rainbow school cafeteria may be a worthy try. Located in McKay Elementary School in Beaverton, this school cafeteria, through the Oregon Dairy Council, in connection with the school nutrition program, decided to promote healthy eating, including colorful fruits and vegetables. They settled on a décor that encourages students to follow the golden rule of nutrition and eat various brightly colored fruits and vegetables – hence, the name rainbow.

Boulder Valley School District – Boulder Colorado

This Colorado school has upgraded its meals and serving sizes. Nowadays, it sells burgers and nachos made with hormone and antibiotic-free beef, locally sourced tamales and bratwurst, and buns from Whole Foods Market.

Eating hormone and antibiotic-free meat give you peace of mind knowing you’re eating healthy beef and not introducing chemicals into your body. This Boulder Valley School cafeteria also includes a wide array of international dishes, making it easy to choose the kind of meal you’d like to buy.

You can find scratch-made items like lasagna, cheesy polenta with veggies, Szechuan beef and broccoli stir fry, and oven-fried chicken. Students in this school can hit up the salad bar as often as they’d like, letting them have unlimited skim or organic 1% fresh fruit and milk.

Seattle Public Schools – Seattle

Seattle has always been a developing town for food. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Seattle public school cafeterias are locally focused and nutritionally sound regarding school lunches. Here, kids are treated to a melange of pizza and burgers daily. But what’s more beautiful is that there are plenty of vegetarian options. So, you don’t have to worry about being a vegan; your needs are sorted.

There are also plenty of grab-and-go items like hummus platters, chicken Caesar salads, and turkey-pastrami subs. Daily entrees start from fish tacos with chili lime salsa and bean enchiladas to spicy buffalo wings with potatoes, garlic toast, and chicken teriyaki with whole grain rice.

U.B.U. Lounge – Multiple States

This school cafeteria is more of an all-encompassing lunchroom experience than solely about food. With comfy couches and chairs, a broad selection of both made-to-order and grab-and-go eating options, and a self-expression wall for students to voice themselves, U.B.U. Lounge is a new way of thinking about cafeteria design catering to the teenage lifestyle like never before during school hours.

Menu highlights in this school cafeteria include So Sesame chicken (served in authentic Chinese food container), Santa Fe Turkey (turkey, bacon, ham, and cheddar baked with chili mayo in a sub roll), and Chicken Fredo Roll (a baked pizza dough pocket filled with grilled chicken, bacon, Alfredo sauce, and Parmesan cheese).

Berkeley Unified School District- Berkeley Calif

Berkeley public school district takes the health of the student body with the at-most seriousness it deserves. The chef, Alice Waters, also an activist, developed the Edible Schoolyard Project. This project eliminated all processed foods, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, refined sugars, high fructose corn syrup, dyes, additives, and other harmful chemicals that routinely find their way into the institutional eats from Berkeley school lunch menus.

The cafeteria’s menu features local food, incorporating all Mexican delights like burritos, tamales, enchiladas, quesadillas, nachos, crispy and soft tacos, balsamic chicken wraps, and teriyaki drumsticks with root vegetable slaw.

Burlington School District – Burlington Vermont

Burlington School District is one of the most innovative schools in terms of its approaches to eating and nutrition. It comprises an in-depth beekeeping program, has a third of its meals locally sourced, and a brand-new food truck program since Spring 2014 that is an integral part of the school’s business and culinary arts classes.

Typical student lunches include daily soups, a salad bar providing unlimited refills, milk, and the bonus of extra fruits and vegetables available for hungry kids during classes.

Sidwell Friends School – Washington, D.C.

This school is all about luxurious meals and cuisines you’d never dream of showing on their cafeteria menu. A good example is an entire lunch serving Brazilian delicacies like Caldo Verde soup, feijoada, all-natural chicken with coconut milk, and mango and pineapple with mint and lime. There’s soup every day, including creamy spinach soup, borscht, Tuscan white bean, and creative dishes like hot and sour Cajun gumbo and Creole Caprese served on Fat Tuesday.

Calhoun School – Manhattan, New York

The French Culinary Institute chef who never disappoints, Bobo is in charge of this private school’s “Eat Right Now” culinary program in the school cafeteria. By rotating members, Bobo’s kitchen squadron submits a ten-day menu a week in advance comprising 40% chicken, 20% red meat, 20% fish, and 20% vegetarian.

There’s also a fully stocked salad bar with dressings made daily from scratch by in-house chefs, sandwiches (typically vegetarian), soups, and starches like whole-wheat pasta and quinoa.

Dalton School – Manhattan, New York

This school cafeteria boasts a menu rivaling nearby restaurants, teaching its students the unique eats they can look forward to once they graduate and find a lucrative jobs at high-powered firms. The “Meatless Monday” and “Tasty Tuesday” are integral to the weekly changing menu, ensuring the kids are never bored.

Conclusion

Depending on your location, there are many school cafeterias to buy food from. So, if you’d like to purchase meals from a school cafeteria, do your homework on the schools near you and whether they have lunch programs or not. If they have, inquire about their menu and take it from there.