Students can expect better food quality and more international cuisine from the caf’s new chef.
Chartwells officials hired Chris Barton to be the new executive chef Oct. 1. Barton has a master’s degree in culinary arts and has cooked for celebrities and royalty.
Emily Anderson, director of dining services, said becoming a certified executive chef requires serious and extensive training. She said Barton will have a positive impact on dining at OCU.
“He’s got an amazing reputation,” she said. “He’s the best chef in Oklahoma.”
Barton said he had to put in thousands of hours of work, study for several tests and complete internships with many different chefs to become an executive chef. He said he wants to bring his experience and expertise to make eating in the caf more enjoyable.
“When you look at a group mentality when it comes to dining, you want to target the whole experience for everybody,” he said.
Barton is from outside Toronto, Canada, and has traveled around the world working with various catering companies. He worked in Canada with catering companies and hotels before moving to the Cayman Islands. There, he worked five years with a hotel dining service. Barton said he had the opportunity to cook for Queen Elizabeth while she was traveling through.
“You usually don’t get to meet her when you serve her. You’re in a receiving line, and she walks past, and if she’s interested in you, she’ll stop and shake your hand,” he said. “I was lucky enough she shook my hand.”
After leaving the Cayman Islands, Barton moved to Miami, and worked for the city’s largest society catering company.
“We catered Sylvester Stallone and a number of people that lived in Miami, but we catered his house regularly,” he said.
From Miami, Barton moved to Dallas in 1999, where he worked for a company called Culinary International. After leaving Dallas, Barton worked in food service at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. He decided to come to OCU to have a steadier home life with his family, he said.
“Higher education is a lot better for a chef for home life,” he said.
Barton said he wants to bring more healthy food to campus, but he also wants to keep foods that students enjoy.
“What we’re trying to do is broaden the scope of healthier options that still fit inside comfort food or homestyle food,” he said. “You can make mac and cheese healthy if you really work at it.”
Barton said he wants to focus more on presentation of the food.
“If it’s not appealing to look at, it’s not appealing at all,” he said.
The caf cannot provide every different type of protein every day, Barton said, but they hope to diversify the selections throughout the week. As executive chef, Barton will be in charge of the overall scope of what goes on in the kitchen, but he also will sometimes visit the different stations to engage with students.
Barton organized a nacho bar for students two weeks ago. He said he wants to continue to implement new specialty days in the caf and have better comfort food for students. From his worldly experience, he said he hopes to make international food for students to try.
Sandeep Panduda, computer science graduate, is a food service worker in the caf and said he would love for Barton to make Indian food. He also said he appreciates that Barton plans to bring in more healthy food.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Panduda said. “And also to bring in food that the students like.”
Barton said Italian is his favorite style of food to cook because of an internship he had with a chef who worked for one of the popes. But despite his culinary depth, Barton said he appreciates comfort food.
“I can tell you when I get home at night, I love to have a bowl of Fruit Loops,” he said. “Captain Crunch, Fruit Loops, cereal is the go-to.”
Barton said he wants students to have a consistent, positive experience in the caf.
“I don’t want students to worry about, ‘is there something good to eat in the caf today?’” he said. “The best compliment is that students leave here happy.”
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