Feeding the force

  • Published
  • By Deborah Silliman Wolfe
  • Thunderbolt staff writer
LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  The main kitchen in the Ray V. Hensman dining facility at Luke Air Force Base looks like a scene out of the hit television show Top Chef, only calmer. Airmen in white chef outfits and blue chef hats cut, chop and stir quickly and efficiently as the lunch hour approaches. 

"Our biggest meal of the day is lunch. We serve around 400 Airmen daily just for that one meal," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Tucker, 56th Services Squadron Food Service dining facility manager. "This is not like your general cooking at home; it's quite a bit different. At home, you make mac and cheese, but are you really making it? It comes in a box. Here, the food doesn't come in a box and there is a recipe that you have to follow. You actually have to slice the meat, cut the vegetables, and add ingredients at a certain point in time. 
It is a different process." 

The 30 Airmen and two civilian employees who run the dining facility serve active-duty members, E-5 and below, four meals a day weekdays: breakfast between 5:30 and 8 a.m., lunch between 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., dinner between 4:30 and 7 p.m. and a midnight meal from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m., which consists of one hot dinner entrée and a variety of breakfast foods. On weekends, brunch is served 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., dinner is served 4:30 to 7 p.m. and the midnight meal is 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. 

Master Sgt. John Agonoy, 56th SVS Food Service superintendent, oversees both the dining facility and the flight kitchen. The flight kitchen is a smaller version dining facility located near the south ramp on the flightline and is mainly a takeout facility, whereas the Hensman dining facility has a sit-down dining room. 

"The flight kitchen is a scaled-down version of what we do over here," Sergeant Agonoy said. "Here, we have at least three hot entrees, three veggies and two starches at each meal. The flight kitchen usually just has one hot entrée." 

According to Sergeant Agonoy, the menus served at the Hensman dining facility are driven by Air Force Service Agency headquarters. 

"The reason is uniformity," he said. "What we are serving right now, they are serving the same thing at Davis-Monthan, at Spangdahlem, and at Yokota. It is a worldwide system."
Though the menus are universal, each Air Force facility has a different set up that the cooks, bakers, buyers and store room personnel have to become accustomed to. 

"In the last four months, we have gotten 16 people straight out of tech school," Sergeant Tucker said. "Airmen here have the opportunity to apply the basics they learned at tech school to a real world environment." 

According to Sergeant Agonoy, the new Airmen who come to the facility haven't had the experiences working at the production level that the Hensman facility has. Working at Luke, they learn time management here because they have a multitude of responsibilities. 

"We work off of a menu that cycles every fourteen days," Sergeant Agonoy said. "If a young Airman cooked a certain entrée today, he will not see that recipe again for another two weeks. There is a recipe to follow, but it still takes a lot of practice. The jobs here are labor intensive." 

All the hard work and dedication of the members of the Ray V. Hensman dining facility goes into accomplishing their mission, which is keeping the Airmen in the dorms well fed. 

"The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia helps keep the prices low for our Airmen," Sergeant Tucker said. "And that helps us accomplish our mission -- to feed the Airmen in the dorms and keep them from having to go off base to eat."