Do you remember the old lunch program?
God, their food was good. Orange Chicken Wednesday, Pizza Friday. Sure, they weren’t the healthiest meals to serve to growing children, but they definitely made us happy.
That’s why it was a sad day when the school had to shut down the program for no longer being “financially
viable.” Oh, well. You gotta do what you gotta do.
We didn’t know what was coming, but we never imagined it would be as bad as it is now. Well, “bad”
is probably not the best word to describe the food we have now, even though it’s probably the adjective that
most people would use.
In a way, it would be better if the food were actually bad. That way, people would object. Rather, it’s
just…underwhelming.
The chicken is bland, the pizza is bland, the salads are bland. Just about the only thing that isn’t bland is
the packaged fruit snacks, and we know that GoodFellas isn’t responsible for them.
That’s all you can really say about GoodFellas. It gets the job done. The food is safe. But is “getting the
job done” really what we want?
Thanks to our lunch program story, we know that we have at least two viable options.
The first is the Epicurean Group, which, according to legend, is the proverbial bomb. Paninis, eggs Benedict, steak – we would kill to get that stuff over the plastic-wrapped plastic we’re served now.
The problem is, we don’t know much about what they will do for us, a frustration that some of us vented at a recent editorial board meeting. We can’t really blame them. They are, after all, a for-profit company, which requires them to approve the school for profit ability before agreeing to open up shop.
Not only that, but they might even require us to do some remodeling of our kitchen, which would probably
cost quite a bit.
Option two is takeout.
Country Day is within easy driving distance of many good food chains. We’ve got Noodles & Company and Chipotle just a few minutes away, and a Subway down the street. Many of these places even offered to give us bulk discounts for our patronage.
But even with these discounts, the lunch may be a bit more expensive than what we have now. And we’ve
got to get it here, too.
So what do we advise?
Call the Epicurean Group and scope out what they can do. We want those paninis in our stomachs, preferably
soon. If the cost is too high, maybe it’s time to ditch GoodFellas in favor of a rotating menu of various
local eateries.
Really, it could be anything as long as it changes.
Previously published in the print edition on Feb. 17, 2015.
