It was nearly midnight on a bitter January night when a group of Washington's most celebrated chefs assembled around a long table at downtown hotspot Brasserie Beck to debrief one another on their recent White House mission. Enlisted by the first lady's office in her war against childhood obesity, each had eaten lunch at a D.C. public school. The unanimous verdict was fairly predictable: no stars.
The food, largely paid for by the federal government, was fatty and overprocessed. A breakfast sandwich had more than 100 ingredients, said one chef, angrily waving a photo of what looked like a burrito that he'd taken on his cellphone. Where there were salads, the kids just threw them away, bemoaned another. In one school, a chef reported, there was no cafeteria at all. The kids ate out of pizza boxes at a folding table.
"What we are feeding our children is an outrage. We should be marching with picket signs and pitchforks in revolution," said Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria.
But a wholesale replacement of chicken nuggets and nachos is a tall order. Whatever the chefs think, the meals served in schools do meet federal nutrition standards — and they are delivered at a price the government is willing to pay. So the city's Iron Chefs — the group includes White House assistant chef Sam Kass, José Andrés of Jaleo, Todd Gray of Equinox, Spike Mendelsohn of Good Stuff Eatery and Robert Wiedmaier of Brasserie Beck — decided that each chef would adopt a school. Kass is spearheading the project.
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