New Haven Independent

Having taken in-house the food services operation previously managed by Aramark, the BOE at Monday night’s meeting approved contracts for bread and bagel purchases for the school year up to a maximum of $1, 956,550.

That’s a lot of sesame, onion, poppy, everything. The providers will be J.J. Cassone Bakery of Port Chester, the George Weston Bakeries, of Albany, New York, and, for local bagel aficionados, the round delicious items will all be hailing from Rose Enterprises, d/b/a Bagelicious Bagels of Cheshire.

The bagel portion of the $1.9 million staff of life budget is a mere $90,000. Will that be sufficient? Given all that’s on, uh, the BOE’s plate, the city should not have to confront a bagel shortage during the upcoming school year.

How did Bagelicious come to the attention of Clark and newly hired head of food services, the Food Dude, Tim Cipriano? The BOE’s supervisor for instruction, Ima Cannelli, was having a bagel at the Bagelicious retail store in Cheshire one recent morning. It was so good, she said, that she suggested Bagelicious respond to the board’s request for bagel proposals, which was then circulating. And so it happened. Cannelli said that personally she prefers cinnamon raisin.

The other significant food contract approved by the board Monday night was with Fowler and Hunting, LLC, of Hartford. This contract, up to a maximum of $2,768,596, is for the provision of produce to the schools’ cafeterias throughout the year.

Boring and unwholesome menus had been one of the most aggravating factors in criticism of the previous food service. That in no small part led to Aramark’s departure and the BOE taking on in-house management of food.

“Fowler is a local operation as is Bagelicious; that all but makes certain that more of the food brought in will be locally grown and produced,” Clark said.

Then he showed a reporter the detail of the contracts, both for breads and produce. Here’s a random sampling of the annual fare soon to be entering NHPS’s 20,000 student stomach in 2008-2009 school year:

Thousands of cases of 12 kinds of apples from Braeburn to Red Delicious; 50 bushels of bok choy; 100 cases of cauliflower cello; 300 cases of yams (apparently Chef Tim loves yams); and much else.

In the all-important breads and bagel area, it is significant that the approximately 940,000 12-packs of hamburger and hot dog rolls will all be either wheat or multigrained, not white. In the particularly critical bagel front, there will be 10,000 packages of plain bagels; and 30,000 packages of flavored bagels, with 12 per package, for a 480,000 total, all whole grain.

Clark could not be reached by press time for a comment on a Bagelicious sesame. However, stay tuned.