At This Cafeteria, The Line Starts At The Coulibiac

By Fred Ferretti

“We have the only three star cafeteria in town,” said Richard Ruiopp, president of the Bank Street College of Education, chewing his cold salad of shredded chicken breasts with pesto and eyeing the crusted slice of coulibiac of salmon and vegetables still to be eaten.

A bit extravagant? Perhaps, but Mr. Ruiopp might just be right because in the basement kitchen of his experimental school just west off Broadway on 112^th Street is a most unusual effort at mass feeding—one that has the school, it’s staff, it’s pupils, and it’s neighbors crying for more.

At the heart of the project is Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, consulting chef to Dean & DeLuca, the SoHo food specialty shop, who became it’s representative at the Bank Street school last October when shop and school signed an unusual food-service contract. From a tiny glassed-in office surrounded by shelves of cookbooks, Mr. Rojas-Lombardi creates the daily menu for the 150-seat school cafeteria, which is open to the staff and to the public; feeds the 70 Bank Street students eligible for the school’s lunch program; provides a training ground where those apprenticed to Dean & DeLuca learn food preparation and presentation; conducts evening cooking and baking classes, and supervises a small but growing retail food operation.

“I am always interested in trying something new,” he said in a recent interview.

Which is why 8-to-12 year olds have such culinary exotica as couscous, roast quail, elk stew, Creole gumbos and bouillabaisse instead of peanut butter and jelly or those steam-table concoctions usually associated with institutional feeding.

“Lunch should educate children a little, and I love teaching,” said Mr. Rojas-Lombardi, who is 35 years old. “And I don’t accept any no’s. Everybody eats what is made, and when I walk into the cafeteria, if any are not eating, the others tell me.”  He grinned.

It can be educational—certainly tasty—for adults as well to walk in to a school cafeteria, as a visitor did recently, and find the following menu on a blackboard and attractively displayed on counters:

Parsnip, onion or cream of acorn squash soup; onion, leek, or morel pie; coulibiac, saucisson in corn bread or a Russian bread loaf; salads of chicken in pesto, tuna or vegetables; sandwiches of Genoa or piquante salami or Black Forest ham; prosciuttini or smoked turkey; a selection of cheeses, including Gorgonzola and smoked Derby; fresh French breads and pastries.

For breakfast that day the cafeteria featured a poach egg and ham in a brioche with Hollandaise sauce.  All of these, breakfast and lunch, ranged in price from $1.75 for a mug of soup to $4.50 for a meat and cheese platter.  Soup and sandwich was $3.00.

The cafeteria has become a more or less open secret in the neighborhood, with people torn between keeping it to themselves and telling friends about something that is acquiring chic. The school, which would prefer to have the public come after the staff eats at 1 P.M., has little hope that it will, for many people turn up not only to eat but also to shop. Behind the counter on display and for sale were fresh acorn and spaghetti squash, leeks, red peppers, beets, and bunches of asparagus; in bushel baskets at the cash register were bananas, red and green apples and oranges because there was no room for them among the baked cookies, tarts, rugelach and sticky buns. There is even Bank Street Blend, the house coffee, which sells for $4.65 a pound.

On a platform in one corner of the cafeteria sits the school’s lunchtime entertainment, a pair of pickup musicians, Scott Jackson Wiley on classical guitar and Luciano Herrera on violin. They are paid a salary and receive lunch, and their presence in the cafeteria pleases Mr. Rojas-Lombardi.

“I love chamber music, but on our budget this is the closest I can get,” he said.

Denise Dreszman, assistant to Mr. Rojas-Lombardi, and director of the cooking school, manager of the cafeteria, kitchen supervisor, and cash register attendant, wades among all the food, making certain that the apples are polished, the pastries glazed, the smoked meats properly placed – and the cooking-school students properly listed. And she tastes everything.  Asked how it felt to be part of an empire, she replied with a smile; “It doesn’t feel like an empire—it feels like a kitchen.”

Which it is, ultimately, according to Pat Greene, special assistant to Mr. Riuopp, who is responsible for bringing Dean & DeLuca and Mr. Rojas-Lombardi up from SoHo.

“Our central purpose was to provide a cafeteria for staff and students.” She said, referring to the search that began last August when the contract of Bank Street’s last food-preparation contractor ran out. “I called around to food people, asking their advice, and several recommended Felipe.”

In addition to being Dean & DeLuca’s consulting chef, Mr. Rojas-Lombardi, a native of Peru who trained in Europe, designs food service systems and is a cookbook advisor to Simon and Shuster. He was enticed to the West Side, Mrs. Greene said, because “we offered the opportunity, not only to provide what we wanted but a way for him to train people for his store and the facility to run his SoHo cooking school.”

Dean & DeLuca is “not making money here, but making money was not the expectation,” she said, adding; “What they wanted was to cover expenses and food costs and get a training site and they have that. We hope that by next year they’ll integrate students into a teaching program.  That’s our hope too.”

Mr. Rojas-Lombardi thinks that would be a good idea. “Too make Peruvian duck is better than to just explain Peruvian duck,” he said.

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