Kindergarten food in Phnom Penh: a tasting day for parents

If you are choosing a kindergarten in Phnom Penh, here is a question the brochures never answer: what is actually on the tray at lunchtime? On Saturday 19 September we answered it the only honest way. We opened the hall, set out exactly what our children are served on a normal school day, and asked their parents to sit down and eat it.

Not a showcase meal. The same kitchen, the same trays, the same food our nursery and kindergarten classes are given every day.

Big on Character. Close as a Family. Food belongs inside that, not beside it. A child who has eaten well can concentrate through a long work cycle, play hard outside, and go home happy.

Parents came to see for themselves

Parents and children seated at the long wooden tables in the school hall, facing a presentation screen — Families filled the hall — parents, grandparents, and a good many of the children too.

A parent can read a menu, and it tells them very little. What a parent really wants to know is who cooks it, what it looks like when it reaches the table, and whether their own child will eat it. That is only answerable in a room, with a plate in front of you.

Our kitchen explained how the food is made

A representative of Eleven One Kitchen speaking with a microphone in front of the presentation screen in the school hall — Eleven One Kitchen, who cook for our school, opened the morning.

Eleven One Kitchen took the floor first: who they are, how a school meal is planned, and the care they take over it. Their own line is “Great Food Brings People Together” — and for a morning in our hall, that is precisely what it did.

Then the lids came off

Two stainless steel warming trays holding stir-fried greens with carrot and a chicken dish — The same dishes that go out to the classrooms at lunchtime.

Parents queueing at the serving table, each holding one of the compartment trays the children eat from — Parents served themselves onto the children’s own trays.

Rice, a chicken dish, stir-fried vegetables, a bowl of soup, steamed pumpkin — and, at the end, fruit and a small dessert. Every parent carried the same tray a child carries.

And then everyone ate

A mother and father sitting either side of their small son at a wooden table, helping him eat from a school lunch tray — The verdict that counts most is the one given at the table.

Lunch at school is $6 a day. That is a line on our fees page; on Saturday it was a tray in front of a parent, being eaten by their own child beside them.

The honest part

A mother speaking into a handheld microphone from her seat in the hall, her child sitting beside her — The microphone went round the room, and it was not ceremonial.

A parent filling in a printed feedback form on a wooden table — Every family was asked to write it down as well as say it.

We did not hold this morning to be praised. We held it to be told. Parents put their questions to the kitchen directly, out loud, and then wrote their answers on a feedback form before they left. Some of what came back was kind. Some of it is work for us.

A conversation with three sides

The Orange Crest teaching team and the Eleven One Kitchen team standing together on the hall stage — Our team and the Eleven One Kitchen team, at the end of the morning.

This is the part we care about. Not a school telling parents what their children eat, and not a caterer defending a menu — but the kitchen, the families and the school in one room, around one table, working on the same thing.

Food quality is one of the pillars of growing up at Orange Crest, and a pillar is not something you inspect once. We will keep improving it, and we will keep asking.

Come and eat with us

The simplest way to judge a kindergarten’s food is to turn up at lunchtime. Orange Crest is in Toul Kork, Phnom Penh, and tours run during school hours, Monday to Friday 07:30–17:00 and Saturday 08:00–12:00 — book a visit through the link below and we will show you the dining room while it is in use.