Return To Lunch Lady Land

People always seem to complain about school lunches. But, truthfully, I have mostly fond memories of my grade school cafeteria. OK, so it wasn’t haute cuisine, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve eaten in my life either. Or maybe those memories of grade school lunches are viewed through the same rose-colored glasses I view most of my youth. Or maybe my memories are more about the camaraderie than they are the food. Lunchtime was a chance to cut up with friends and that was the best part.
“I used to bring my harmonica to school and then stick it in the middle of my sandwich and play it,” recalls Lewis Dodson, co-owner of Avondale Wine & Cheese. “The teachers didn’t know where the sound was coming from because it looked like I was just eating a sandwich.”
In addition to Avondale Wine & Cheese, Dodson is also opening West Ashley’s first distillery and he’s part owner in Folly Beach’s popular Drop-In Deli. But before becoming the owner of multiple businesses, Dodson was part of a Mississippi rock band called Your Mama. So perhaps that ol’ harmonica in the sandwich trick was just a glimpse into the future for the musician and restaurateur.
Like Dodson and his harmonica sandwich, sometimes we were the ones playing the tricks in the cafeteria and sometimes the tricks were on us.
“So I really liked the cafeteria rice in elementary school; it was cooked in a steamer so it came out really sticky,” says Mike Kulick, co-owner of Voodoo TIki Bar & Lounge on Magnolia Road. “I was eating some when a kid told me that another kid had found some ‘magnets’ in his rice. I thought magnets were really cool, so I was like ‘lucky!’ Turns out I’d never heard the word ‘maggot’ before.”
Morgan Hurley, co-owner of Mex 1 Coastal Cantina on St. Andrew’s Boulevard, recalls another lunchtime surprise. “I remember being in the 3rd grade and just starting at the new school and meeting new friends,” recalls Hurley. “I remember one day walking up to the lunch lady, who was serving something white and creamy with an ice cream scoop. I said, ‘Nice, Ice cream! Can I get two scoops?’ She said ‘sure.’  Stoked, I sat down and dove right in. It was a rude awakening when I realized it was mashed potatoes! Needless to say, I will never trust anyone with an ice cream scoop again.”
While Mogan’s lunch experience at a new school was a bit of a bummer, I can honestly say lunchtime helped me in the awkward transition of attending a new school. I was 10 years when my family relocated from Pennsylvania to South Carolina. It was quite a culture shock to enter a whole new world and a brand new school full of strange kids who talked way different than me. But on the first day in the cafeteria, I was going through the lunch line and something amazing happened. When I got to the milk cooler, I was expecting the usual choices of skim, 2-percent, or whole milk. But then I saw crate after crate of brown cartons. Chocolate milk was a daily option at my new school! Lunches would never be the same again … and maybe this new place wasn’t so bad after all.
Other than the milk choices, there wasn’t much difference in the school lunch choices in Pittsburgh and South Carolina. But no matter where I was eating it, my favorite lunch day was pizza day. The pizza itself was rectangular. It was flimsy. It was topped with the worst ingredients known to man. But I wasn’t a man. I was 10 years old, so it was awesome!. Luckily pizza day was every Friday at my school. Sometimes served with French fries. Sometimes served with applesauce. Always served with corn. It was just a little easier getting out of bed on pizza day.
Derek Harris, co-owner of d.d. Pecker’s Wing Shack also has fond memories of pizza day. He brown bagged a bologna sandwich with ketchup and chips every day through 7th grade. “Always warm and smushed at the bottom of my locker,” says Harris. “Except on pizza day, of course. That frozen, rectangle pizza … yum! And I would always follow it with my orange twin pop for dessert. That’s living.”
Harris’ business partner and brother-in-law Brian Lawson isn’t quite as nostalgic about the rectangular, flimsy pizzas, but does admit that he had a pizza-like pepperoni and cheese sandwich every day for 12 years, with potato chips and a Tastykake, of course.
For Mike Ray, owner of Normandy Farm Artisan Bakery, it’s not pizza day that he remembers best. “Salisbury Steak Tuesday! Come on,” says Ray.
And Ray is not alone in not listing pizza day as his favorite school lunch. “My favorite school lunch was basketti (spelling is correct),” says David Miller, co-owner of the Kickin’ Chicken. Miller doesn’t say exactly what “basketiti” was, but we can only assume it was some form of spaghetti, perhaps served only on game days during basketball season? “I also loved the sexy servers,” jokes Miller. “Instead of fishnet stockings, they served us with fishnet hairnets!”
Miller’s business partner and fellow Kickin’ Chicken owner Chip Roberts has different memories of his elementary school cafeteria because he, like Harris and Lawson, was a brown bagger. “Oversized paper bag with PB&J on jelly juice-soaked white bread,” recalls Roberts. “And a Coke wrapped in tinfoil to keep it cold … It never did.”
What was your favorite (or least favorite) school lunch meal or memory? Let us know by leaving a comment below or post it to our Facebook page: WestOf Newspaper