FEEDING THE UNIVERSITY by John DeVilbiss
Stephanie Ordaz
arrives at the Junction on the campus of Utah State University at 2 a.m. when the temperature outside is six degrees and an arctic wind is blasting out of Logan Canyon. She hastily sheds her coat, dons a clean chef shirt beneath a white apron that extends to her knees, and pulls her dark hair back inside a nylon honeycomb hair net. She moves quickly, turning on ovens and moving bagels from the cooler to the humid proofing cabinets needed for nudging the sleepy yeast. She swiftly weighs and mixes dozens of loaves that will become Hazel’s bread—cutting 60 pounds of dough into individual pieces from the 600–pound bulk for baking that day. Without fanfare, she quietly goes about her regular routine marking the start of a new day in an endless cycle of feeding the university. She is part of a legion of employees under the wide apron of USU Dining Services. “We serve 8,000 guests per day around here,” says Alan Andersen, executive director of dining services. “With 30 full-time people and 350 students, we are managing a very complicated team to make it happen.” Teams within teams, like the baking crew, that also includes Carrie Olson, morning supervisor, and Steven Wright, head baker. Small in number but mighty in productivity. Every portion of Hazel’s bread, swirled with blueberry and raspberry for French toast, comes from this thick-walled fallout shelter relic cradled between Mountain View Towers and Richards Hall. Every slice that holds the famous Marv N’ Joe tomato and cheese sandwiches, every bagel (260,000 per year), glazed doughnut (46,000 annually), Danish, croissant, turnover, and every one of the 15,000 muffins per year. Every minute matters if they are to meet their 6 a.m. delivery deadline.
16 UTAHSTATE I SPRING 2019
By 8:20 a.m. Jaime Castillo, a junior in agribusiness from Ogden, is just finishing a sweet roll Olson had lathered with orange topping hours before. He is rushing off to class, but not before grabbing his customary pastry, apple, and Caffé Ibis coffee, and with no idea that people got up so early to make that possible. It may seem like a thankless job, and one in which those who prepare and serve the food work in isolation, but there is satisfaction derived in being part of “a really complex thing that works pretty dang well,” says Donald Donaldson, chief executive chef. For ultimately, it is the paninis, pastries, and everything else emanating from their kitchens that links them to students like Castillo. “I relate to the food that connects us,” he says. “If the food is presented and they like it, then that’s how I like them. And if they keep coming back, that’s how they like me.”
The Junction
is Donaldson’s domain. At 6-feet 3-inches tall, he needs no traditional chef’s toke to make his presence known in the kitchen. It is mostly unspoken, though, for like everyone else this day rushing around at 5 a.m., there is no time for chatting. His responsibilities not only entail creating the menus and meals for the 800 students each day in the Junction, but for eight of the 13 cafés on campus. The complications that he and Andersen refer to come into play here, for every café has its own menu, and personality. For a Bohemian vibe, there’s the Artist’s Block Café & Bakery, for cosmopolitan, Luke’s Café on the Quad and Shaw’s 88 Kitchen in Huntsman Hall. For somewhere smart and upscale,
