Innovative menus and healthy food made from scratch

This blog was created by Dan Cruickshank, head chef at St. Andrews College. Dan represented the Republic of Ireland for Sodexo global chef in America, won silver at Sodexo Salon Culinaire and collectively won silver at the Catex corporate catering awards.

I started my chef career 15 years ago, working in hotels in Ireland. I learnt the basics with a good kitchen team at a nice hotel. After that I continued to work in the catering industry, even whilst traveling around South East Asia, covering a few different roles.

After two spells of travelling, having children and a few different roles I started working in a seafood restaurant in my local town. This was where I discovered my love of seafood.

When my old boss called me to ask if would I be interested in working in schools, my first instinct was that the role wasn’t for me. The idea of cooking school dinners just didn’t appeal.

However I went along to an open day and was so pleasantly surprised. The food at St Andrews college is all about innovative menus, making healthy food accessible to students and of course everything is made from scratch.

In fact the students are sometimes more focused healthy eating than me. It’s great; I enjoy the challenge of keeping up to date with the kids, incorporating the latest super foods and helping the students feel at home. We change the menu every day and try to make it feel like they are having home cooked meals.

I’m really proud of the food at St Andrews, in fact, we were the first school in the Republic of Ireland to have a food critic review published in the Sunday times.

Before I entered my first competition I was really nervous, it was a very stressful time in general as my partner was due to give birth that day! But once I got up on the stage the adrenaline took over and I loved it!

I plan to enter more competitions in the future. It’s a great way to meet other chefs and a really nice circle of people who enter the competitions.

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