The Stuyvesant lunchroom's head chef, Andreas Skouras, has been bustling through from the kitchen to the serving lines to the oversized ovens and refrigerators behind the scenes in the section of the cafeteria unknown to most of Stuyvesant's students for more almost ten years. He arrives at school everyday at 7:00 AM and checks each type of food for their proper temperatures in each respective refrigerator. At 7:30, Skouras' two assistants arrive to begin preparation for the day's cooking. The salads are tossed, the tomatoes are sliced and the sandwiches wrapped and another day of Stuyvesant lunch begins.

Skouras is one of the many staffers who pull together to provide the Stuyvesant community with school lunch. In addition to the workers, the lunchrooms' inner workings and the rules of the 5th floor area that feeds the Stuy populace have largely been taken for granted.

There are five periods of lunch in the Stuyvesant schedule. While many students choose to go out for lunch, patronizing local restaurants and businesses, many remain to dine at Stuyvesant's cafeteria.

The cafeteria offers three lines from which to buy lunch. "Here, we have 3 different stations," explains Skouras. "One is the fast food where we have hamburgers cheeseburgers, pizzas, Jamaican patties and french fries. The third station is the cold cuts, all sandwiches."

Skouras continues. "We have the middle station which is the special of the day which can be anything." Together, with the manager, Skouras is the man largely responsible for the choice of special of the day and the style in which it is served. According to the head chef, the middle station provides different foods from the cafeteria food norm and offers better nutrition.

The choices Skouras makes for the middle station, which usually is the most popular of the three lunch lines, depends on a "beat" provided by the Board of Education. The "beat" is a list of foods that the Board approves of for student consumption. Every 6 months, certain foods are taken off and others are added.

"I like the middle line because they have the most interesting food," says senior John Mangual. "It varies from day to day and that's better than having just a hamburger every day."

Some students believe the quality of food at Stuyvesant to be better than that of other schools. Senior David Chernikovsky said, "The food isn't bad. Its better than my junior high school's."

Skouras agrees. "The quality of the food is much better. This doesn't mean that the other schools have [bad] food, no. This is an elite school and we have to treat our students better than other schools." Skouras provided an example of how the Stuyvesant lunch, despite being on the same beat of food choices as all other schools, could be of higher quality. "I cannot buy anything else except what the Board of Education allows. But I can enhance the food. The Board of Education says I have chicken patties. They bring me the chicken patties but the manager and I decide we are going to strip the chicken, add sauce and make chicken teriyaki," the chef explained. "It's the same menu, but it's differently prepared."

Even with all the styles in which Stuyvesant serves its food, all of the meals meet strict Board of Education nutrition requirements.
"Not too much salt, not too much butter, everything has to be to standards of temperature," said Skouras. "We have to have a fresh batch [of offerings of items like salad] every period."

Another element of the lunchroom environment is the actual cafeteria itself. Managing a lunch period and the mass of rowdy students is not an easy task says Virginia Adams, a lunchroom monitor.

"[Students] leave their tables messy, they throw stuff around, they play cards, they're very disruptive," says Adams, who monitors the cafeteria for three periods. "What they need in the cafeteria is more than two people. Kids come into one exit and go out another. They sneak food out. While you're on the east side [monitoring], they're on the west side doing what they want. Its a bit too much."

According to Assistant Principal Steven Satin, approximately 600 students are in each lunch period, in this school of about 3000 students and five lunch periods.

Oneida Freeman, the monitor of condiments or known by students as the "ketchup lady", testified to the behavior of students in the cafeteria. "Some of them are nice, some aren't. Some are courteous, some will say thank you, and some won't. Some are good students, some are kids."

Many students do not follow the guidelines for the number of ketchup packets allowed per student. "The rule is four ketchups. Some go by the rule and some don't," says Freeman, who has worked at Stuyvesant for nine years. "The manager made the rule. If you don't [follow the rule], you'll run out by the end of the day."

In addition to managing the ketchup, the salad dressings, and the salad bar, Freeman also cleans tables. The cafeteria's tables are constantly cleaned during the lunch periods. "During the day you use sanitizing solution," says Freeman. "And at the end of the work day you scrub the tables down."

Despite the lunch staff's hard work in preparing school lunches and cleaning after students, many students opt to buy food outside of school.

"Usually its just more convenient for me," says junior Janet Hseuh, "because I usually have work to do [during my lunch period] and I can take my food with me. But in the cafeteria, they give you a hard time about that."

For some students, the food in the cafeteria does meet their tastes.

"The quality of the food [at Terry's] is much better," says senior Damani Taylor. "The cafeteria food is cheap and like an army surplus but it doesn't taste that great."

"Kids have to understand that its better to eat here than to go across the street to pay 5, 6 dollars to have a meal which is less nutritious, high in cholesterol, high in carbohydrates," says Skouras. "They have a meal here for a dollar or less, with the salad, the fruit, the condiments, and everything is prepared to the standards of nutrition."

Junior Stacy Tse agrees. "For a dollar you can't get anything better."

Stuyvesant's chef does his best to please Stuyvesant's hungry. On days where there is excess food, Skouras decides to let students who have the last lunch period be offered extra amounts of food. Skouras enjoys his job, explaining "If you don't take pride in your job, don't do it." However, just like Stuyvesant students are notorious for their dealings with high levels of stress, Stuyvesant's lunch-workers are prone as well.

"It's a lot of work because we have to feed over a thousand kids and its a lot and lot of stress," says Skouras.