USNA King Hall Galley

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1 FACILITY PROFILE USNA King Hall Galley The Academy s 70s Era Kitchen Gets Modern BY BARRY LOBERFELD ASSOCIATE EDITOR The U.S. Naval Academy s King Hall galley is nearing completion of a thorough renovation that includes updating kitchen equipment used to prepare meals for midshipmen since about Originally built in 1952, the King Hall galley was last modified in the mid- 90s, when it had a partial renovation that upgraded electrical, mechanical and drainage systems. No kitchen equipment was replaced, and no major architectural work was done at that time, although significant reconfiguration was done to the freezer and storage facilities. The kitchen equipment used for food preparation in the galley is approximately 40 years old, explained Naval Academy spokeswoman Jennifer M. Erickson. A conceptual study to review the processes and equipment of the galley was completed in As a result of that study s findings, the current reno- vation was designed and will include modern foodpreparation processes and equipment. These significant improvements, along with the renovations to the King Hall dining facility completed in June 2008, will enhance the academy s ability to provide the best possible food for the Brigade of Midshipmen, said Erickson. A final component of the renovation will be the introduction of a servery, or food court, that the Brigade will be able to utilize for non-mandatory meals, viz., those on weekends. The servery will provide a variety of meal choices to the customer and will include the capacity to perform small-batch frying. It is expected that this customized food production area will provide a tailored foodservice experience to rival other major universities. Renovating the U.S. Naval Academy s King Hall galley began in March 2010 with a temporary kitchen constructed for the interim. The kitchen is where meals are prepared for the approximately 4,400-member Brigade of Midshipmen. On July 21, 2009, the Naval Academy awarded a $40.9 million contract to Barton Marlow Co., of Linthicum Heights, Md., for the project, which is funded through the American Recovery 18 Government Food Service May 2010

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3 FACILITY PROFILE and Reinvestment Act. Design work for the project began upon award of the contract, which includes revised food-preparation processes and equipment. The equipment will be provided consistent with the terms of the competitive processes required by the contract. The work being done on the King Hall galley will not affect any other areas. The entirety of the project will be completed by December The main galley itself is expected to be completed by August 2011, but then there will be some remaining pieces of work, such as beautification of the area. TRANSITION Construction of a temporary galley next to King Hall was completed on March 13, 2010, which was also the first day of spring break for the midshipmen. This galley prepared food for the midshipmen who stayed at the academy during spring break, but the first meal to be prepared and served to the entire Brigade was dinner on March 21. The midshipmen continue to eat in the King Hall dining facility. An important aspect of the transition to the temporary galley, which will also hold true for the renovated galley itself, is that combi-ovens have been introduced as one means of food preparation. The combi-oven is an oven concept that uses not only convection but also steam to cook products. Since the temporary galley does not include deep-fat fryers, which had been used extensively in the former galley, the foodservice management team spent a considerable amount of time identifying those products best suited for preparation in these new specialized ovens. As a result, a number of changes have been made to the menu to ensure that the meals served continue to be of the highest quality, noted Erickson. However, these changes are relatively transparent to the Brigade, and other food preparation techniques remain largely unchanged. Capt. Glen Stafford, supply officer, expounded upon the nature of those changes. We worked with our prime vendor, Sysco, to make sure that we experimented with those items for instance, chicken fingers, fries, potato wedges, breaded fish fillets, etc. to make sure that we shifted all of our ingredients over to products that came out of the combi-ovens in a fashion that would be appealing to the customer in terms of texture, color, browning and crispness. So, we made changes, not so much to the menu per se, but to the ingredients that went into the menu, so that the experience would be similar for the customer. The majority of the foods that Naval Academy food service uses can be categorized as prepared foods. Very little in our business model today relies on taking raw ingredients and then preparing them ourselves to make conversion to the finished state, Stafford said. We do a great deal of prepared-food production, cooking and re-therming. However, he added that once food service has the cook-chill equipment that it expects to receive in the galley renovation project, it might then, for the first time in many years, revisit its ability to start from scratch with cuts of meat and other food items that will be well suited to that technology. Cook-chill is a suite of equipment that when used together allows cooks to very efficiently and effectively prepare most forms of food that are in a semiliquid state, e.g., stews, soups and chili. A variety of techniques allows them to batch-prepare, rapidly chill and properly store food for future re-heating in its already fi nished state. The results tend to be very high quality and very consistent. The equipment provides an extended shelf life for the product and allows the kitchen to then have a residual food bank of meals that can be provided on very short notice if that is necessary. It s a technology that s used in a number of industrial applications, said Stafford. It s an emerging technology that s really been on the scene for some time but is becoming more prominent now. THE TEMPORARY GALLEY The temporary cooking facilities are provided by Kitchens To Go (KTG), an industry leader in mobile and modular kitchen solutions. KTG commercial 20 Government Food Service May 2010

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5 FACILITY PROFILE kitchens facilities are built for government, institutional and corporate use by Carlin Manufacturing. Past clients include the Disney Companies and the U.S. Marines. Originally, the Naval Academy was going to go directly to temporary-complex providers, but then there was a change of plans and they ended up rolling the temporary portion of the project into the general contactor s specifications. Now the general contractor had the responsibility for setting up a temporary complex for 18 months to support the remodeling of the galley. Barton Marlow approached KTG to provide the temporary complex, but the kitchens supplier found itself at something of a disadvantage. The galley work was very well defined, but the temporary facilities were not, said Steven M. Rubin, a company partner. The academy just said, We need this list of capital cooking equipment: combi-ovens, kettles, etc. We need this much storage space: cold storage, dry storage, frozen storage. We need this type of pot-and-pan washing facilities, etc. We need an area for garbage. Basically, all the pieces of a commercial kitchen complex. It was left up to KTG to organize and design a complex that would flow and allow Naval Academy food service to meet the capacity needs of feeding 4,400 midshipmen three times a day, seven days a week. Since the galley had about 57 thousand square feet and the temporary facility would have only approximately 34 thousand square feet, the company had to design a complex that would allow foodservice workers to operate at the same level as before, but with about a third less space. KTG s largest modular concepts, which are also mobile, are 12 by 60 feet and are built to commercial kitchen standards in terms of both durability and health- and building-code compliance. The company took six of these modules and fit them together to provide the capacity for all the functions requested by the Naval Academy. Ironically, the temporary kitchen won t be so temporary after all. The major cooking components of the modular complex will be moved into the new galley, Rubin said. The Naval Academy is changing its cooking model for mandatory meals. Since it will no longer include fryers, there are no fryers in the cook line of the temporary kitchen. What is included are 80-gallon steam-jacketed kettles, clamshell griddles and 12 combi-ovens. With the griddles, you just throw the product on the griddle, bring the top down and it cooks from both sides, said Rubin. And you can do a lot of different things, very sophisticated cooking concepts, with the combi-ovens. There was a discussion of cook-chill possibilities, but there are pieces of the process that the temporary complex does not have. This is kind of an intermediate step towards the cook-chill, explained Rubin. They re breaking away from the way they ve done it for years and are using new equipment in our facility, getting used to that, so that when they go to a full cookchill process, it will be an easier transition since they have already started to use the equipment that they ll use from the cook part of the cook-chill. The temporary kitchen features one of the most modern hood systems currently on the market right now. The system brings in air from the outside and directs it down the back wall, along the floor and then back up. As it comes back up and gets sucked out by the hood system, it takes smoke and heat with it. What it does not do is take air-conditioned air out of the facility. Rubin noted that KTG s ability to clean, refurbish and reuse their modules makes this whole project very green. The temporary kitchen will stay online until Naval Academy food service tests their new facility and are fully confident that everything is working well. KTG will then start shutting down the temporary facility and removing it. The academy will turn the area back into a courtyard. FOODSERVICE FUTURE A combination of government and contract employees operate food service at King Hall, which was named in 1981 for Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King ( ). Workers in the galley are government employees; contract workers are employed in the dining hall. The King Hall dining facility, which is around 71,000 square feet, serves approximately 70,000 meals per week. Frankly, I m extremely delighted that the academy has an opportunity to bring its technology into the 21st century, said Stafford. It has been a long time in the making, and so clearly it is a great opportunity to improve the food quality for the Brigade of Midshipmen. It is also an opportunity to give our employees a chance to work with new, modern technology that allows them to be more efficient and more effective. It is really a great time to be here and to be part of this kind of project. GFS 22 Government Food Service May 2010

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