Mark Barrett, the 37-year-old chef at Henry’s Restaurant on the Upper West Side, has big ambitions for the $20,000 Hobart food mixer that sits, unused, in the kitchen of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. “Instead of serving frozen pizza out of a box, they could be making their own dough,” Mr. Barrett suggested during a tour of the school kitchen this week.
He also has big ambitions for the school’s head chef, Larry Cowell, who is one of about 40 employees of school cafeterias scheduled to attend a training session with Mr. Barrett on Wednesday sponsored by the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food.
“We’ll see you there, right, Larry?” Mr. Barrett asked Mr. Cowell.
“Um, I think I have a doctor’s appointment that day,” Mr. Cowell said, half-joking.
Hard to blame him for being a little skeptical. After three decades of cooking in New York schools, Mr. Cowell might well be wary of the latest in a string of outsiders swooping in with suggestions about overhauling the frozen foods that feed thousands of students daily.
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