It doesn’t matter whether you’re a veteran of the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines, they all agree. The best time of the day is chow time.
It may not be those MREs that bring back the best memories of military food. But regardless of whether the meal was a ready-to-eat, mix with water kind of a meal, or a hot, well-balanced almost home-cooked dinner, sitting down to eat, and having those few minutes to yourself, is almost universally special to veterans. And to active duty folks as well.
Take last Tuesday at the award-winning Trident Galley on Naval Base Kitsap Bangor. At just about 1100, the doors open and flocks of Sailors and Marines in grey cammos begin to enter the base dining hall. Some head toward the express line where they can get a plate of the daily special. Others head toward the custom-made line where they can order up a chicken sandwich or a hamburger with all the fixings.
“Tuesdays are Mexican (food) day,” said CWO 4 Erick van Hofwegen, who is in charge of the Trident Galley. “We’ve got chicken enchiladas, beef fajitas, beans, rice and everything you would want to go with it.”
Although nobody will argue that the Trident Galley is just about the best food around, and has won many awards, most who eat there don’t know what it takes to get that food on the plate. The Trident employs 38 military and 40 civilian staff.
There’s a large storage room where those assigned to work in food service make sure to have a 30-day supply on hand. A computerized ordering system is manned with Sailors who constantly check stock. Food supplies are ordered from a Navy-issued catalogue and most of the food comes through Sysco Foods.
“If it’s not in the catalogue, and it’s something we want to have, we try to find a distributor who we can get it from,” van Hofwegen said.
The kitchen has an area for vegetable prepping, for baking and decorating cakes, pies and other baked goods, a steam-cooking area and several large stoves where culinary specialists cook for up to 500 Sailors and Marines at each meal. The Trident serves three meals a day seven days a week.
“When it gets near pay day, we can see up to 800 in here,” van Hofwegen said. That’s because meals are part of the package deal for enlisted persons and are paid for, he said. The basic daily allowance per Sailor is $10.58. But when Sailors have money in their pockets, they’ll often go to McDonald’s or grab a pizza.
The Trident offers three salad bars, a selection of freshly baked deserts and a full selection of drinks, including Starbuck’s coffee with a Starbuck’s trained barista.
Just what gets offered each day is decided by Naval Supply Systems Command.
“They’ll tell us, but we can adjust if we can’t get the ingredients we need,” van Hofwegen said. “But we have to write down why we made the changes.”
For most Sailors, the target calories intake is 2,100 a day. In places where Navy Seals are, it’s more like 3,000 to 4,000 a day. There is a focus on nutrition and making sure the meals offered are balanced with fruits and vegetables.
Even the old “SOS” has taken on a new look. No more salty dried beef and thick enriched white flour gravy. Now the Navy serves creamed beef, made with freshly cooked beef and a lower calorie brown gravy.
The most popular meals are “what’s ever on the speed line,” van Hofwegen said.
“They like to get in and eat and get out,” he said. “Italian food, Mexican food and Filipino are real popular. Course they’d like us to serve steak and lobster everyday, but that’s not in the budget.”
On Thanksgiving, they serve a big buffet with turkey and the trimmings and prime rib, and many retirees and their families come to eat.
As a culinary specialist during his 28 years in the Navy, van Hofwegen came into boot camp undecided. He was offered the spot to cook and he took it.
Likewise for Richard Yanagihara and Wilson Diaz who both now work at the Trident Galley.
All three have cooked aboard ships and on land. And all have stories to tell.
Like the time when van Hofwegen was a Seaman Apprentice and messed up on a bread recipe adding in 500 portions of yeast.
“We had this huge doughy thing that I couldn’t serve,” he said. “We didn’t want to get caught, so we threw it overboard. It made a huge splash and just laid there. Pretty soon we heard the call, ‘Man overboard.”
They never did find the dough and eventually it sunk, he said. “But it was a bad day.”
van Hofwegen said those who become culinary specialists in the Navy have sometimes watched too much of the Food Network channel.
“I have to reel them back,” he said. “I can’t have too many Emerils running around the kitchen.”
When at sea, the food supply is usually for 60 to 90 days. Food is brought out to the ship as needed and can include local fruits and vegetables that are native to the closest port cities. There can be up to five galleys on a ship, and as many as 5,600 service members to feed.
Yanagihara has been in the Navy for 13 years and cooked aboard the USS Lincoln for two years, before coming to Bangor.
Diaz, a Silverdale native who graduated from Klahowya in 2002, has spent eight years in the Navy and and has been deployed on the Lincoln, stationed in San Diego and now is back near home at Bangor.
Cooking Mexican food is OK by him, but he just doesn’t really like to eat it.
“I’m more of an Italian guy,” he said. “I like to cook pasta.”
As for Yanagihara, it’s the tortilla soup that’s his favorite.
“Spicy,” he said.
One of the civilians who works in the Trident Galley, Heather Larson, said working at the galley is her dream job.
“It’s the best,” she said. “We’re proud of everything we make. And we’re proud of the fact that we employ veterans here, too.”
As for van Hofwegen, the job of overseeing what’s being fed to Navy personnel can get weird sometimes.
“I’ve had moms call me and tell me their sons are out of money and can’t eat,” he said. “I tell them ‘I don’t manage his bank account, but I’ll make sure he eats.’”