Richard O'Donohue, Commons Chef

Author: Thomas Brant

When I stand in a long line at Proctor waiting impatiently for the blue-uniformed server to replenish the supply of chicken parmesan, all I can think about is how good chicken parm is, how I cannot wait to eat it and how sad I will be when my stomach tells me there no room for more. As far as I am concerned, the red sauce-covered hunks of chicken - yes, I do eat several - are my reward from heaven for slogging through another day of classes.

But, as it turns out, that is not the case. Proctor head honcho Richard O'Donohue recently took me on a tour of his dining hall's cavernous basement kitchen, providing a behind-the-scenes look at how the 20 or so Proctor employees work together to create their culinary masterpieces.

No, I realized, the chicken parm does not come from heaven. As it turns out, O'Donohue and his colleagues put a lot of hard work, sweat and tears into the food that Middlebury students enjoy. (Actually, they try to keep their sweat and tears out. It is mostly just hard work).

An enthusiastic man who seems like he was born with a toque blanche on his head, O'Donohue started his career with Dining Services in 1988 as a cook in the Freeman International Center's three dining rooms. For the past four years, he has served as Proctor's Commons Chef, responsible for creating the menus and supervising activity in the kitchen.

Consistent with Middlebury's addiction to technology in seemingly useless places, O'Donohue has at his disposal a powerful computer database to help him plan even the simplest menus. While he does consult it frequently for recipes and ingredients, he admits that every once in a while he likes to spice things up.

"Occasionally I'll go to a cooking Web site and if I see something that looks good, I'll try it," he said. So that's where that nameless, fantastic-tasting mush came from a few weeks ago.

Once O'Donohue creates the menus (usually four weeks in advance), First Cook Supervisor Paul Smith coordinates the preparation with the Second and Third Cooks. For the main dishes, Smith's team starts getting ingredients together the day before the meals are served. On the morning I visited, he had just finished preparing the soup for the lunch and dinner.

"We make all the soup for each day at once," Smith said, pointing out three gigantic vats in the middle of the room. Thinking that they could not possibly all be full of soup, I asked O'Donohue later how much Proctor makes every day.

"About 20 gallons," he said.

The next stop on the tour was the salad preparation area, where I saw two women furiously chopping carrots and pulling apart heads of lettuce.

"They make all of the ingredients in the salad bar fresh right here," O'Donohue said proudly. "Even the salad dressing is from scratch." I immediately felt guilty for sloppily letting some of the hand-cut lettuce fall off my plate at last night's dinner.

From there, we moved on to the sandwich prep table, where Third Cook Lou Langevin was busy rolling Proctor's famous green wraps. My mouth watered at the sight. O'Donohue explained that Langevin starts rolling about 10:30 for the lunch rush, and once those pre-rolled wraps are gone, he moves upstairs and rolls more until the dining hall closes at 1:30. Because of his unique rolling job (and the popularity of his wraps), he is the only cook that students typically see in the serving area.

The last stop on the kitchen tour was the bakery, which happens to be the only bakery on campus. Proctor supplies baked goods to all Dining Services operations, including the other dining halls, The Grille and catering events, O'Donohue said. For my benefit, he asked Baker Bob Stowe, a very busy man with a jolly face, how many cookies he bakes every day.

"About 1,500," Stowe answered, without looking up from his work. "But you can't forget the bread, about 80 to 100 loaves, or the cakes and pies." I noticed about 20 pecan pies - my favorite - sitting in a drying rack beside him.

"Those are for dinner tonight," O'Donohue said.

As we left the kitchen, O'Donohue let me peek inside the three walk-in refrigerators that store food waiting to be served. I looked around for the chicken parm. Sadly, it was not there. But at least now I knew where it came from, and instead of silently thanking the heavens the next time I see it on the menu, I know to thank O'Donohue and his colleagues down in the Proctor basement.