Then again, not many school cafeterias have chef Marc Vetri and partner Jeff Benjamin, who run three of the city's finest Italian restaurants, creating the lunch menu and overseeing the service.
Vetri and fellow chef Jeff Michaud developed menus at the request of a restaurant customer who runs Dream Camp, a summer scholarship program for low-income kids. In the process, Vetri and Benjamin became interested in expanding their charitable work to include reinventing the much-maligned federal school lunch program.
"My goal? It is to have every single school in America serving a fresh, family-style lunch," said Vetri. "There is no reason it can't be done."
The camp's lunch menu included sautéed shrimp with gazpacho, rice with cilantro and lime, and melon salad; hamburgers, eggplant fries, and grapes; baked cod, tomato panzanella salad, and strawberries with mint whipped cream; barbecued beef brisket, coleslaw, corn bread, and watermelon; and a tuna melt (with fresh, not canned, tuna), marinated mushrooms, and mango slices.
One of the campers, Isaiah Watkins, 9, was reluctant to try some of the foods he had never tasted before. "I didn't think I would like it, but I did," he said. "They told me to try it when it was passed, and I did." He found he especially liked barbecued brisket and chicken cacciatore.
Another camper, Rolanphie Galan, 12, was impressed by a simple fact: "Here the food is cooked by people; you actually see people cooking it," she said. "At my school, lunch comes in packages. It's kind of disgusting." A typical lunch is a hot dog and hash browns reheated in a microwave, she said. "I get it for free. Maybe that explains it."
"Lunch at my school is OK," said Nate Norman, 12, "but this lunch is bangin'."
