Andrew Ormsby has been serving up Chilean sea bass and pumpkin gnocchi to Dallas residents for the past 10 years, but his most recent project is feeding lunch to neighborhood children. Area private schools are jumping aboard the Ormbsy bandwagon as an answer to healthier cafeteria food. Though not exactly the exotic delicacies found at his Tucker Bar and Restaurant on Ross Avenue, lunch menus designed by Andrew Ormsby Catering present students with well-rounded handmade meals prepared daily in the chef’s “mother kitchen”. In 2005, a group of St. John’s Episcopal School parents looking to swap fats for fruit sought out Andrew Ormsby’s services and haven’t looked back since. Patty Barteau, the parents’ association health and nutrition chair at St. John’s, says the school’s students dine on fresh fruit chopped daily, with nothing pre-frozen or pre-packaged. Other schools also have made the switch: the Episcopal School of Dallas signed on in January, and St. Thomas Aquinas will incorporate Ormsby’s fresh fixins’ this fall. In Ormsby’s “mother kitchen”, traditional deep-frying methods are avoided in lieu of baking, so kids are eating meals sans chemicals and saturated fats. With children of his own, Ormsby recognizes that at the end of the day, kids will only eat about 15 things, and “our goal is to make it as healthy as possible,” he says.
To learn more, visit ormsbycatering.com.
