Tiny children at Julian T. Saldivar Elementary School line up in their classrooms promptly at 10 am before walking down a hall and through double doors into the cafeteria, where lunch trays that were planned months in advance are doled out.
As they sit talking quietly with classmates, that food—Chinese orange chicken, rice, roasted garbanzo beans, broccoli, a fruit cup, and milk—disappears.
Trina Nelson, the executive chef for the Dallas Independent School District, says that her team puts great effort into creating meals kids will eat. That starts at DISD’s central kitchen at the Maria Luna Food Service Facility, in southern Dallas. Breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner are made there and trucked to each school, where workers organize them quickly before the school day starts.
Several chefs serve at schools as cafeteria supervisors. They constantly solicit feedback—from how much gets thrown away uneaten to suggestions from students about new items. Each of the approved nominees is given a chance to earn its way onto the permanent menu. If more of a new dish ends up in trash cans than stomachs, it’s back to the drawing board.
Lessie Dixon, Alex W. Spence Talented/Gifted Academy
Years with the district: 40
Although she is reluctant to brag, Dixon (top, center, flanked by her colleagues) is proud of the work she and her coworkers do. “We’re coming to work every day,” she says. “I see the faces of the kids, and we talk to them, and they come talk to me sometimes. I really enjoy that.” But the work isn’t always easy. “It takes energy and strength to get everything prepared. And you have to set up, clean up, and get ready for the next bunch.”
Elizabeth LavinNeighborhood Spotlight
Dallas
“Sometimes, as adults, we’ll think something’s great, and the kids are like, ‘What is that?’ ” Nelson says. To overcome the skepticism, supervisors head out to schools and conduct taste tests. The district has been doing that sort of data gathering with high school students for several years, but more recently it has added younger grades to the mix.
“I get a taste test with a group of second graders, and hey—you think the older kids give it to you straight?” she says, laughing. “That bright idea that I had, the kids were like, ‘No, Chef, I don’t think that’s gonna work.’ ”
Nelson says every new recipe concept is tackled by thinking like a 3-year-old. “I try to put myself in that mindset,” she says. “Is it red? Is it green? Is it brown? Is it something they recognize and they think looks good and smells good? We just have to keep the kids at the forefront of every recipe we come up with.”
Nelson and her team want to avoid food waste. But they realize that because so many students come from families that fall under the federal poverty line, the meals they serve are often a student’s most significant source of nutrition all day. The district sources produce and protein from more than two dozen Texas farms. Some of that meat finds its way to smokers at the central kitchens and at select high schools. The smokers, added in the spring of the 2022-2023 school year, allowed Nelson and her team to develop new flavor profiles, including a rub that satisfies both federal nutrition requirements and the taste buds of finicky students.
“They come in, and they’re smelling it,” Nelson says of the smoky scent that permeates the campus at Dr. L.G. Pinkston Sr. High School. “It’s a smell they recognize because who doesn’t barbecue on the weekends? Initiatives like that kind of thinking outside the box get kids excited about what is being served.”
Familiar food items can also form a bridge to new culinary discoveries. “We go out and talk to kids to get an idea of what they’ve been exposed to,” Nelson says. She’ll then use that information to introduce new foods, often through efforts such as Harvest of the Month, which features a fresh fruit or vegetable currently in season. “A lot of it’s new stuff that our kids have never seen. One month, we did Swiss chard, and, of course, they were like, ‘What is that?’ So what I like to do is compare it to something that they’re familiar with. ‘Have you ever had collard greens before?’ ”
Is it red? Is it green? Is it brown? Is it something they recognize and they think looks good and smells good? We just have to keep the kids at the forefront of every recipe we come up with.
The farmers who supply the ingredients sometimes participate in the educational process. “We can show the difference between fresh and something on a shelf,” Nelson says. “Another key part of getting our kids to eat is helping educate them on the food we’d like them to try.”
Nelson says the district’s work is paying off through less food waste and more nourished children. “Education is a large part of it, and by doing these initiatives, we’re seeing improvements as far as participation,” she says. “Kids are not taking the tray and then you see it in the garbage later.”
Lately, she’s been getting requests for some of the old standbys that dropped from the rotation. Her team is now working to create updated versions that meet USDA standards. Chicken tetrazzini, for instance, could come back in a healthier new form since students often mention that their parents or grandparents said it was their favorite when they attended a Dallas school.
“So, sure,” Nelson laughs. “Why not bring back the chicken tetrazzini?”
This story originally appeared in the August issue of D Magazine with the headline “Tall Order.” Write to bethany.erickson@dmagazine.com.
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