Program supports school meals made by fine-dining chefs

New Yorkers who dine at chef Bill Telepan’s eponymous Upper West Side restaurant typically spend about $80 for dinner, feasting on lobster Bolognese and grass-fed rib eye. At certain New York City schools, meanwhile, students also dine on Mr. Telepan’s recipes, ranging from Tuscan roasted chicken to butternut squash ravioli. The cost? $1.75. Gratis if the student qualifies for a free lunch.

There are 60 NYC public schools—mostly in poor neighborhoods—that host Wellness in the Schools (WITS), a nonprofit that reallocates the same lunch budget allotted to every school into recipes created by Mr. Telepan. They aim to be tastier and healthier than the usual fare.

It’s a challenge. The ingredient budget for a school lunch is roughly $1.25, including 23 cents for milk. This tends to rule out lobster and grass-fed beef.

Then there’s the difficult task of pleasing young palates. “Kids aren’t as sophisticated, that’s for sure,” says Mr. Telepan, who serves as the program’s executive chef.

The city’s standard school-cafeteria program is a marvel unto itself. It serves 930,000 meals a day, 169 million a year. It’s the nation’s largest institutional food program, according to the city Department of Education.

And cafeteria food these days is nothing like the fare most of us were raised with. These days, many public schools in the city have a salad bar, the bread is often whole grain, and the meat is not-so-mysterious.

Improving on the norm, then, is a difficult task, especially given the fact that WITS-run cafeterias deal with the same constraints as their standard brethren.

Mr. Telepan’s recipes have to work in a range of school kitchens that run the gamut from ancient to ultramodern, and ingredients must be sourced from the education department’s 429-item food procurement list.

Then there are the safety regulations. To prevent food poisoning, raw animal protein is banned in New York’s public schools. All meat and poultry arrives precooked and frozen.

But what the WITS cafeterias can do, thanks to the culinary school-trained chef positions the program funds in each school, is prepare recipes with greater complexity.

Consider the latest recipe created by the education department, for example—the Burgerrito. It’s a precooked beef burger and a slice of American cheese encased in a whole-wheat wrap, topped with four pickle slices and something called Specialty Sauce SAU-106. Heat and serve.

“It’s a popular item,” says Eric Goldstein, CEO of the department’s School Support Services division.

A WITS entree, in contrast, typically features freshly chopped vegetables and sauces prepared on site, like the popular vegetarian chili served with house-made pico de gallo. Canned foods are verboten. Even the salad dressings are made from scratch.