Chef Miguel

Four gloved fingers scrape butternut squash, farrow, and gooey cheese into a greased hotel pan. A navy lanyard hangs from his baggy pant pocket, dangling less than a foot away from red and white Nike sneakers. “If I don’t get black shoes” he chuckles, “my wife is going to kill me.” 

Miguel Gayel is a cook at Bryn Mawr College’s Erdman Dining Hall. Everyone calls him Miguel. He’s been working there for about 18 years. “A long time,” he jokes.

He takes a long stainless steel paddle out off of the dirty dish cart and scrubs it clean with a steel wool sponge before dipping it in a blue, then pink sanitizing solution. “Tonight’s dinner is beet tartine, grilled chicken breast, roasted cauliflower, and farrow butternut squash,” he said. 

He rushes around prepping both tonight and tomorrow night’s dinner, each with different silver paddles that look as though they belong on a canoe. He dips a spoon into a vegan cheese sauce. “Mmmmm,” he said, “that’s good,” a common phrase for him. 

Miguel doesn’t serve anything he doesn’t want to eat. If it’s bad, he fixes it. When asked if he has ever made a bad meal he said “no, I don’t make those.” 

Before food hits the kitchen, it arrives in large semi-trucks and is inspected by the dining hall’s receiver to ensure quality and freshness. What gets wasted depends on how much food is ordered, how fresh it is upon arrival, and how much students eat. 

In 2015, Erdman began weighing the wasted food from students’ plates. “Something was confusing with the signage,” said Unit Manager Kevin Williams, and students thought they were being encouraged to weigh themselves. Eventually, Erdman suspended the project. 

While Miguel doesn’t work in the dish room where the lion’s share of students’ food scraps are disposed of, he is passionate about food waste. 

Before Erdman, Miguel worked in a nursing home. He couldn’t serve anything more than a day old which meant he had to throw out a lot of food, he said. As a man passionate about food and limiting food waste, it was hard on him. Now, “I never throw something out,” he said unless it has been temperature-abused or can’t hold up the next day. 

Temperature, formally called Temperature Controlled for Safety or TCS, is a food industry standard that outlines a list of foods that become unsafe once reaching a temperature danger zone, or 41-140°F. The University of Minnesota said, “if food is held in this range for four or more hours, you must throw it out.” 

Miguel said the biggest items he throws out at Erdman are scrambled eggs, rice, potatoes, and animal proteins like fish, red meat, and pork. “If it stays on the line for more than an hour” he noted, “we’ve got to throw it out.” 

Being a chef changed the way Miguel thinks about food and waste. At home, he said his wife does most of the cooking. “I consider people in other countries, in my country, that don’t have waste” but he believes other kitchen workers don’t share that passion. “I was appalled to see the things they throw away here,” he said. 

Miguel grew up cooking for his large family from the age of 13 in Jamaica. He left in 1991, in his early 20s, and got a job in a restaurant in the United States. “I love cooking; I would do it for free if I had to,” he said with a wide smile. 

He pauses for a second, handing a student worker a small aluminum saucepan. “We’re going to pan these and wrap them,” he said. She stands by him with her hands crossed, waiting patiently for him to hand her a hotel pan steaming with food. 

Miguel’s favorite meal to cook is the week four Caribbean dinner. He said it is one of the most popular dinners for the dining hall, and he often runs out of food. 

“Everything on [the menu for the Caribbean dinner] represents me, the country where I’m from, and my African heritage,” he said. The Johnny Cakes from the Caribbean dinner as well as General Tsao’s chicken are student favorites at Erdman. In the kitchen, these foods are rarely wasted. 

Miguel reminisced on formative experiences as a chef throwing away food. He said he ran a Jamaican restaurant in the Philadelphia area with his wife some years ago. “If I still had the restaurant,” he said, “we would be divorced.” He admitted his wife is more stringent about saving food. “To her, it’s throwing away profit,” he said, “to me, it’s a standard.” 

The kitchen was quiet as student workers started the cleaning portion of their shifts. Miguel washed another paddle and sang along to the radio. “I make it up to you baby” he belted, and the staff smiled from the corner of their mouths.