I worked for the Navy as a civilian for several years. The coffee mess was a sacred institution, and I often heard the saying, “Ships float on coffee, not seawater!” And although I never spent a night on a ship, I can understand how essential good food and java can be to the morale of Navy units both afloat and ashore.
When I got the press release from the Navy League describing the cooking demonstrations planned for their Sea-Air-Space 2013 Exposition at National Harbor, I was surprised that so much emphasis was given to the culinary arts in a trade show basically dedicated to showing off the latest in warfighting technology. Five cooking demonstrations were held daily for the three days of the show, and although I only attended for one day, I was impressed by the full kitchen, enthusiasm, and dedication of the personnel I met there. The food was excellent, as well.
The Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP, for short) is in charge of logistics and supply for the Navy and Marine Corps. It ‘s also charged with maintaining “quality of life” for servicemembers and their families – and I’d say food service is an indispensible part of quality of life!
Michael Harants, the Corporate Chef for the Navy, proudly supplied me with many statistics about the Culinary Specialist (CS) rating. The Navy currently has 7,300 CS’s who served 93 million meals last year from 237 food service operations. They get specialized culinary training in “A” School.
Each demo was designed to showcase a different chef. CS2 Richard LeBlanc, from Norfolk, repeated the preparation of his Smoked Stuffed Chicken Breast, just as he had made it to win the Gold Medal at the Annual Military Culinary Arts Competition run by the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence. Chef Michael explained that this is the largest culinary competition in North America, and is organized in cooperation with the American Culinary Federation. At the expo, Chef Richard did everything from breaking down the chicken to making the forcemeat stuffing and the barbeque sauce, with the exception of the smoking (not allowed in the exhibit hall!).
Even without the smoking, it was delicious.
Other demos were more of a team effort.
Each dish was nicely plated and displayed after the demo. Even better, menu cards were provided, although the quality of these varied.
Chef Michael is also in charge of the Adopt-A-Ship program, which sends civilian chefs to serve on ships at sea, and provide further training to the CS’s in industry practice. Of course, the civilians learn from the Navy procedures for keeping the galley ship-shape. From 40 to 110 chefs a year have shipped out as volunteers – only their travel expenses are covered.
There was more to the expo than NAVSUP, of course – even other food experiences.
It seems that all one hears about drone deployment these days is negative. I am delighted to report that I attended a presentation by Northrop Grumman, which incidentally provided a nice cold buffet lunch, and learned about an application of drone technology that is nothing but beneficial: an airborne mine-hunting system which detects underwater mines remotely. Not only does it save sailors’ lives, but it can be deployed for civil incidents. It was used in body recovery from the Flight 800 crash, and in the fatal Baltimore water taxi accident in 2004.
And no article about a Navy event can close without a mention of coffee (see lead graph). There were at least four booths on the show floor dispensing the brown elixir, among them SAIC and Lockheed Martin. They know their audience.
