Photo by Yasmin Al-Modhwahl/The Gazelle

Every day of the week, the student body, as well as some faculty and staff, file into the NYU Abu Dhabi dining halls. Waiting for us is prepared food at the buffet, a salad bar stocked with items and a live kitchen taking our orders. This is what we see on the surface, at least. But where does our food come from, and what are the standards for what we eat?

The steps leading from farm to plate are not overly complex; the tricky part on NYUAD’s end is balancing all of the different options available and making sure the kitchen is constantly well-stocked.

Marcelino Romanos, Director of Facilities, Campus Services and Housing, explained that this process was established while NYUAD was being constructed. It follows a similar model to that of NYU New York. Before the institution launched, NYUAD signed on with Abu Dhabi National Hotels to receive service from ADNH Compass, a program that provides catering. Romanos noted that this company was chosen because of its reputation.

All of the dining employees are contracted by ADNH Compass, which also controls the ordering of food and ingredients. Through an online system, NYUAD Executive Chef Sanchin Mohan orders the type and amount of provisions necessary. The ADNH Compass office then finds the suppliers through the database.

“A bulk of items … frozen, dry, everything non-perishable [is ordered] weekly,” said Mohan. “Anything fresh, every day. All the vegetables, meats … eggs, dairy [come] every day.”

ADNH Compass mainly uses a Dubai-based central supplier called Mohebi Logistics. According to its website, Mohebi Logistics serves clients like Nestlé, McDonald’s and Marks & Spencer. It connects its clients with food imported from places like India and Oman.

Mohan explained that, like all other food suppliers, Mohebi Logistics is regulated by the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority.

While Mohebi Logistics provides vegetables and meat to NYUAD, it does not have the facilities to be the sole supplier. For example, the company cannot provide NYUAD with dairy products. In such cases, ADNH Compass seeks other suppliers from the database.

In fact, it is standard practice to have alternate suppliers as a backup in case anything goes wrong with the order from the main source. As a last resort, Mohan can go buy the ingredients necessary, but this is complicated since the NYUAD dining halls need a large amount of food.

The main struggle in terms of products has been tofu. It has not been easy to find a supplier that could offer the NYUAD kitchen enough tofu — it uses 300 kilograms per week, yet suppliers could only offer 10 to 15 kilograms. The issue has been resolved, however, and now ADNH Compass orders tofu from a few different providers.

All in all, Mohan does not think it is difficult to balance the various suppliers serving NYUAD because both the online system and the centralization of the process facilitate the connection.

As the NYUAD community wakes up each morning, trucks are arriving around 6:30am or 7am to furnish the kitchen’s pantry on a scheduled rotation.

“Suppliers have days defined because most of the suppliers come from Dubai … [frozen yogurt] comes once a week, every Thursday,” said Mohan. “Hash browns … that comes every day. Bread rolls, cakes, that comes every day. Fish, it comes twice a week.”

Once in the kitchen, Mohan explained that almost everything is cooked on-site. Only fried food and baked goods like hash browns, chicken nuggets, spring rolls, samosas and cakes are pre-made.

“Some things we do … pre-made because we have a shortage of staff and we have to manage in this staff only. There is no space, basically,” Mohan noted.

Moreover, Mohan has to supervise the kitchen’s inventory and make sure there is enough for not only the hungry NYUAD students, faculty and staff but also the eight to nine events held on a daily basis and more than 100 events organized monthly.

“I always have 200 kg of chicken as a back-up,” explained Mohan. “So when a new delivery comes, 200 [kg] goes in and the old one comes out … sometimes functions come unannounced … so I have at least 200kgs as a backup to use.”

On NYUAD’s end, the university contributes to the organizational process in two ways. First, Romanos meets with Chef Mohan at the beginning of the year to set a four-week rotation for the menu. Secondly, the student-run Dining Committee regularly converses with the heads of the dining staff to discuss improvements and recipes.

“We typically work with the [management] on our concerns such as adding the spice bar, adding brown rice/wheat pizza/pasta, more [vegetarian] options,” wrote Dining Committee member and NYUAD Student Government Vice President Corey Meyer. “We have never advocated getting rid of items in place of others.”

As the move to Saadiyat approaches, the decision on whether to continue the contract with ADNH Compass has been kept confidential.

Charlotte de Bekker, the president of Veggie Might, a Student Interest Group supporting vegetarianism on campus, has eyes on local farming. After spending J-Term at NYU Florence, where the dining hall uses vegetables grown from a garden on campus, de Bekker wants to gather information about a garden that will be built on the Saadiyat campus in order to learn whether students can grow produce there.

“The dream is that we set up a vegetable garden in Saadiyat and then we use the vegetables we grow ourselves to cook the food,” she said.

In India, where Chef Mohan used to work, he admitted that the ingredients were from more local sources than they are in the NYUAD kitchen. However, for him, this is not an issue. In the UAE, much of the food consumed is imported from elsewhere.

Nonetheless, de Bekker knows that growing vegetables in Abu Dhabi is possible from personal experience — she has lived in the UAE for the past eight years. Not only does she have personal experience with gardening in the city, but she has also visited local farms and connected with a farmer in the area. But local student farming brings considerable obstacles.

“The problem … is that it would take a lot of water, which would be very expensive,” said de Bekker.

According to de Bekker, another possibility would be to use RIPE Market, an organization that sets up regular markets in Abu Dhabi with locally-grown produce. At de Bekker’s high school, food from RIPE Market was delivered every Thursday. Nonetheless, the produce were seasonal.

Despite the extra efforts involved, de Bekker said there are many benefits to locally-sourced food.

“One of the main reasons why, as human beings, we have such difficulty grasping the implication of global warming … is because we’re not connected with nature,” explained de Bekker.

“Why would we not want to support things that are going on closer to home? How could that ever be a bad thing? Also, as a country, it would help [the UAE] itself,” she added.