This Dubai School Has A Resident Michelin Star Trained Chef To Cook For Students

by Vaishnavi Venkataraman
This Dubai School Has A Resident Michelin Star Trained Chef To Cook For Students

Dubai has a host of restaurants that let you enjoy a meal by top notch Michelin-star chefs. But for the first time, a school in the city is giving its kids a taste of hi-end dining. The Farmhouse at Arbor has taken the concept of school lunches to another level with its new menu on offer. Students can enjoy a healthy meal made by Michelin star trained chef Anna Maria Herrerasusing. Fann-eh, right?

Chef Anna Maria Herreras Offers A Farm-To-Fork Menu

The Arbor School has introduced a unique farm-to-fork canteen concept which offers a menu dished out using locally sourced, organic ingredients. This is the only school in the UAE to boast a resident Michelin star chef as part of their sustainable programme. Students plant their own herbs and vegetables in the bio farm. Chef Anna then brings the produce, and plans a menu around the seasonal crops. That way, kids won’t have much to complain about the school’s lunch either.

The school offers meals to all Arbor School students from FS1 through to Year 8, with ingredients taken straight from the school’s on-site greenhouses.

Chef Anna Maria Herreras said: “This project is giving us the opportunity to educate Arbor School pupils with the nutritional knowledge they need to not only power their own minds and bodies, but to help the sustainability of the environment too. Our concept is simple but powerful – from farm, to kitchen, to plate. It gives us the opportunity to provide the children with quality food, that we’ve produced on the school site, as well as supporting local farmers.”

The menu caters to meat eaters, vegans and vegetarians. On the menu, students can enjoy dishes like steamed edamame and apple sticks, kung pao chicken with steamed snap peas, carrot and pineapple Wedges, vegetable paella and eggplant and corvette potato pie with carrot salad and sliced pears. Nothing on the menu is frozen or reheated.

To ensure safety during the pandemic, the meals are freshly prepared on site, wrapped and delivered directly to students in their classrooms. This way the process is completely contact-free.

Certainly, a creative way to encourage kids into a healthy eating habit.