Since it started planning to reopen, Antioch College has taken a lot of risks, but one really stands out: The two dining halls offer dessert on Fridays only.
“I don’t need to serve students all that sugar,” says Isaac DeLamatre, the food-service coordinator, with a laugh. If they’re really craving something sweet, he says, “we bake muffins every morning.”
The dining halls don’t serve soda at all. And the kitchens don’t have deep fryers. A recent lunch featured fettuccine with broccoli in a cream sauce — with or without chicken — plus bok choy, bread, and a beautifully stocked salad bar. Plain food, but tasty. “Honest substance,” Mr. DeLamatre says, “for people engaging in a rigorous academic experience.”
Mr. DeLamatre was an Antioch student himself for four months, back before the college closed, in 2008, but he dropped out and later went to culinary school. He was cooking at a local restaurant when he heard about the plan to reopen the college, and he pitched “a vision of dining that cuts down on the number of options but makes what we do serve really good.”
It’s a vision almost entirely unlike that of most college food services. Whether they’re run by the institutions themselves or by corporations, they’re likely to offer as many options as possible — sushi bars, pasta stations, deli counters. At Antioch, Mr. DeLamatre says, “instead of spending our money to create a restaurant experience at every meal, we spend our money supporting local farmers. We let the campus farm and other local farms dictate what we do in the kitchen.”
On the campus farm, students grow potatoes, tomatoes, and “an abundance of green beans,” among other things, and the college gets eggs from its own chickens and ducks. The farm raises lambs for meat — seven last year, Mr. DeLamatre says — and he buys grass-fed beef locally. “They’re big meat eaters,” he says of Antioch’s 246 students, with only 15 to 20 percent preferring vegetarian or vegan items.
Unlike most American colleges, which send students off for summer vacation just when local produce is most plentiful, Antioch has students on the campus nearly year-round. So its chefs can take full advantage of summer’s bounty.
“Winter’s a big issue,” though, says Mr. DeLamatre. “People aren’t used to changing their lifestyle in the winter, but that requires us to use food from California, from Mexico,” which he prefers to avoid because of “the systematic inequities of industrial food.”
Creating menus around what’s available locally takes more effort than just ordering from a big supplier, and it’s not necessarily cheaper. “We’re not expected to turn a profit,” Mr. DeLamatre says. “We’re expected to perform a service and not blow the budget. We’re building a culture of scrappiness, and it turns out so good.” He has also worked to create a place “where cooks could thrive,” and where they get health benefits and paid vacation, which are not standard in restaurants.
“I think students appreciate that the food is healthy, and they appreciate the integrity,” Mr. DeLamatre says. “So maybe they’d like some soda. The gas station is right down the street.”
Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.
