Questions about School Lunch

Here's the lunch counter at Gymnasium #10.
See the fresh baked goods on the shelf?!!

Cafeteria Food

• About the cafeteria food, do they eat the same thing everyday or do they have choices? 
• What type of food are the students served at lunch? 

They have delicious food here for lunch! It is freshly cooked each morning, and there was very little or no pre-cooked, frozen, or processed food served here.
Here are some things I ate in the cafeteria during the week I was here:

• Main courses were often noodles or rice with vegetables and beef or chicken with sauce. Sometimes they also had meat-filled pastries. 
• There was always soup available too—vegetable soup or soup with some meat. 
• They had lots of freshly baked bread, rolls, buns, and other kinds of pastries. 
• A variety of salads were available each day—these were always quite different from our typical green garden salad.  They usually had some combination of carrots, onions, cabbage, and beets with a creamy sauce. 
• Hot tea 
• Fruit juice 

Lunch is served very differently here. There is not a scheduled time for lunch like we have. Students come to the cafeteria on their own or with a few friends during one of their 15 minute breaks. They choose what they want from the menu and pay with cash.

Freshly baked bread was always available for lunch.

Dealing with Allergies

• How do they deal with allergies when serving food? 

Students who have allergies will avoid foods that bother them. The cooks will tell students what is in each item if they ask.

Ceramic Dishes and Silverware

• Do they use washable plates, bowls, silverware, or cups? 

Yes, they do. They use many, many fewer disposable things across the whole country than we do, and therefore they create much less trash than us. At the cafeteria students use ceramic plates, cups, and bowls, glasses, and regular steel utensils. 

This is the lunch crew at Gymnasium #10.
They are so nice--and great cooks!!

Meat

• When they get their lunches is there horse meat in them, or do younger children and students not eat that? 

Horse meat is a regular thing here; they think of it just like we think of cow, pig, lamb, or chicken meat. Young and old people eat it just the same. I do not know if it was in one of the many different dishes I ate for lunch; it might have been because they nearly always contained meat.

Fancy Cafeteria

• The school’s cafeteria looks like a 4 star restaurant. Are you sure the schools aren’t fancy? 
• The school looks pretty fancy with the awesome cafeteria. 

Are you talking about the cafeteria in the Altynsarin School? It was very fancy, with tablecloths and and decorations. This is not typical of schools here though.

Cafeteria at the Altynsarin School in Almaty.  Even though
this is a public school, families are "asked" to pay extra
money for their children to attend.  I was told that this
is common for the best schools here.