“When a chef lends his talents to the school cafeteria, students eat like ‘foodies’” - The News & Observer
Published: January 24, 2019Acclaimed Triangle chef Roberto Copa spent Thursday morning at a diminutive table with a group of 5-year-olds, patiently explaining why the rice they were eating was yellow.
Copa, whose Copa Restaurant was recently named one of The News & Observer’s Top Ten New Restaurants of 2018, switched easily between Spanish and English as he talked with George Watts Elementary School students about the meal he had designed for them. As a participant in the first round of a partnership designed by Durham Bowls, Copa and Gwendolyn Coley, the food service manager at the school, developed a Cuban pork and rice bowl that debuted at schools across Durham this week.
When nutritionists sit down to plan school lunch menus, they face restrictions from federal, state and local governments. They have to factor in budget, kids’ tastes, and often outdated equipment. The cheapest and most efficient options for meeting all of these qualifications are often largely pre-cooked meals from national distributors. Last year, Beth Hopping and Linden Thayer, founders of Food Insight Group, wanted to get the Durham community engaged with food in a new way. “We thought the ‘foodiest town in the South’ should be represented in schools,” Hopping said.
They built a community of chefs and school nutrition specialists that they called Durham Bowls, and set their teams to experimenting. On Thursday, Durham Public Schools rolled out their second of 10 new lunch bowls that came from this partnership. Each bowl features at least one local ingredient and one kind of fresh produce. The chefs invited to participate come from intentionally diverse price points and culinary backgrounds, in hopes that the food will appeal to as many students as possible. Chef Copa said he was initially hesitant to take on the project. In 2018, Copa and his wife were busy opening their second restaurant in the Durham area. When Hopping approached him about participating in the project, he turned her down, twice. But Copa’s affections for students and teachers eventually won him over, and he agreed to work with Durham Bowls. “Coming from a family of teachers, I was very used to the whole system,” he said.
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