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Raymond Killick has a big weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
As head chef at St Anne’s College,
Oxford University, he serves up brain
food to the nation’s top academics.
Every day he and his team of nine chefs
cook for 600 future highflyers - and he
tries to make sure they are getting
all of the ingredients to help them
perform at their brainy best.
Says Raymond: “I am obviously
very aware of the kind of food I am
serving and I always try to include
plenty of oily fish, wholegrains, fresh
fruit and vegetables.
“We do an eight week menu for
students and they have four choices for
lunch and dinner, usually two vegetarian
and two meat or fish. We also do three
themed evenings a week - pasta nights,
Mexican, Chinese, that sort of thing -
and five “guest nights” per term where
we do a more formal dinner. These are
very popular and always get booked
up straight away.”
St Anne’s is one of the largest colleges
in Oxford for catering and receives
deliveries from Country Range most days.
Raymond has been working at the
college for the last 20 years and has
seen a definite shift in eating habits
during that time. “Students today are
much more aware of healthy eating
and they have much choice about
what they eat,” he says. “Twenty years
ago all they wanted was pies and
pasties with chips, but now they want
smoothies, salads and healthy options.
Mind you, they still like chips!
“We’re guided by the students and
what they tell us they want to see on
the menu. We have a meeting every
term with a student representative to
hear suggestions on how we can
improve the menu and we’re always
complimented on the food we serve.”
The catering team does not rest when
the student vacations come around, at
St Anne’s this is the team’s busiest time
serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to
numerous different conferences. For
example the average number of meals
served in July is 25,000. |
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