Brentwood Loves the Caf Staff

“Enjoy your food, enjoy your life.” - Victoria Moran Teenagers are a hard group of people to please. We can be moody, and hard to deal with much of the time. But a few key things at Brentwood keep our students constantly happy, level-headed and fun to be around: the faculty, the location, and, of course, the food. Brentwood’s cafeteria represents the beating heart of the student body and realistically the whole school (Sorry Mr. Patel!). Breakfast is hot and ready at 7 am, never wavering and constantly giving us delicious and new options. Not only is there always a series of hot breakfast options (something like fried eggs, sausages, and hash browns) but there is also cereals, toasts, fruits, yogurt & toppings. In addition, there’s also the lovely tea island that holds as much tea as you could need with a separate coffee and hot chocolate drink machine. If that isn’t your style, the array of juices will surely fulfill your needs. Then we have a cookie break around 11 which is a rather swift turn around yet somehow the smiling cafeteria staff waltz out with trays loaded of either cookies, croissants, taquito tacos, cheesy bread, spring rolls, potato skins, smoothies, veggies, pepperoni, cheese, or even fruit salad. Food breaks like this not only give students time to get some more energy but additionally provides a healthy break from working all morning in your classes.  At 1:15 lunch is served, and the kitchen staff will make sure you won’t be eating the same meal twice in a week. How they are creative enough to provide us with so many new options every week is beyond me; we couldn’t be more grateful. Take last week for example:  Monday: Crispy Buffalo chicken wrap with wild rocket  Tuesday: Mushroom agnolotti pasta  Wednesday: Hot turkey sandwich with gravy, crispy onions & Caesar salad  Thursday: Taco beef salad (roasted corn, lettuce, tomato, onions, salsa, sour cream & chips)  Friday: Chicken shawarma (saffron rice tahini sauce & naan bread, hummus) Saturday: Various choices Dinner is much the same too, countless options and plenty of new foods every day for students to try. Why not choose to be at Brentwood when you have such an incredible array of food options every day of the week? Even if maybe you aren’t interested in those hot food options, there’s an overflowing salad bar, hot soup, and a fully stocked sandwich bar too.  Nothing makes my heart swell more than the connections we establish with the lovely people who work in the kitchen. Everything from Misty remembering my dietary restrictions and favourite foods, Lana finding me on Facebook just to wish me a happy birthday, Conrad always making time to be friendly everyone in the lunch line, Morgan working with the entrepreneurship classes to order food and David asking houses if they want to do cooking lessons with him.  So at the end of the day, the Crooks Hall isn’t just space where we go to quickly fuel up. It’s a place where we catch up with friends, teachers, and our favourite faculty members. We run in to get tea in between classes, ask the staff if they can mop around us while we catch up with those we haven’t seen in a while, and meet your teacher’s children and parents during brunch. Brentwood’s cafeteria keeps everyone here smiling and serves every portion of food with a whole lot of love mixed. Phoebe H, Hope ‘19