44 SEPTEMBER 2019 THE ATLANTIC
when it comes to the health of our children,
you have to act now.”
Gluck preached the gospel of fresh
food. His philosophy was “nature
provides”— meaning food should be
unprocessed, sourced from local sell-
ers, seasonal, and organic when pos-
sible. He eliminated junk food from the
cafeterias. Canned food went too. He
successfully pushed the district to cut
ties with the National School Lunch Pro-
gram. The program boxed him into the
Department of Agriculture food pyramid
in return for subsidies the wealthy district
didn’t need.
Free to roam, Gluck explored far-
ranging culinary fields. Souvlaki, hummus,
and quinoa tabbouleh appeared on menus.
Pizza took the form of flaxseed crusts
topped with freshly made sauce and moz-
zarella. “I roast the ducks the Chinese way,
hanging in the oven,” he told Kalafa. “Wedevelop our own recipes here. I use buf-
falo and ostrich, too.” Vegetables were the
real deal: leafy greens, roasted squash. Old
standbys slipped in if they could be con-
verted usefully, like chicken fingers made
with rice flour to become a gluten-free op-
tion. Desserts were low-sugar confections,
yogurt parfaits and puddings made with
block chocolate and fresh whipped cream.
For a time, Gluck considered excis-
ing the holy grail of school lunches:
milk. He told Kalafa it was a myth that
older kids needed milk the way babies
did. He relented only after he found a
hormone-free, grass-fed, minimally pas-
teurized option.The overhaul met with bewilderment
from some parents. But Gluck had his
cheerleaders, moms and dads who advo-
cated for the new offerings. More kids
began buying meals. Higher revenue
offset increased costs. “I don’t have to
struggle to find the pennies to meet my
budget,” Gluck boasted to consultants
from the Greenwich school district who
came inquir ing.
It hardly mattered that there were no
Michelin stars to be earned in the caf-
eterias. Gluck exhorted workers to bring
him their ideas, to share in his passion.
He wanted everyone on board, everyone
working to create restaurant-quality food.
“I’ll look at something and say to the
lead cook, ‘Let me ask you a question:
Would you serve this at home?’ And if they
even hesitate I say, ‘Throw it away. Why
would you sell it here?’ And that’s what
we’ve been pounding into their heads.”BUT ACCORDING TO a federal law-
suit filed by one of the cafeteria work-
ers, Gluck ran his kitchens with a petty
tyranny that verged on caricature. He
was a culinary artist, a Leo nardo of the
lunchroom, lashing workers for errors
large and small. He would later laugh,
recalling the time a worker attempted
to serve cucumber gazpacho hot. But
in the moment, mistakes rarely struck
him as funny. He slammed doors, threw
papers on the floor, pounded a wall,
cursed, called workers “stupid” and
“fucking bitch.” (Gluck denies all of these
allegations. The lawsuit was settled for
undisclosed terms.)
The workers were a tight group, and
they tried warning one another when
they saw his “ugly” eyes and beard com-
ing. “He used to come in, don’t say good
morning, not a smile ... He used to look
around like we were doing something
wrong all the time,” one woman testified.
“Like an animal. He used to walk in and
then always mad.”
When food was not prepared to
Gluck’s liking, another woman said, “the
expression he have in the face, still today,
I still have in my mind. Mean. Mean.
Mean. Mean. He gets so red, so angry,
you know, and then he threw the stuff on
the floor and he run in the office.”
Tears were common. One woman, a
diabetic, passed out after a meeting in his
office. Another fell backwards into a chair
as he barged toward her, screaming. Wil-
son heard the woman yell “Castigare!,”
as if to say, “A pox on your children.” Yet
another worker was so thrown by his rageyounger sister, Joann Pascarelli, got a caf-
eteria job there too. Together, they rose in
the ranks, Wilson to assistant director of
food services, and Pascarelli to manager
of the middle school’s cafeteria.
For two decades, the sisters ran the
cafeterias with an iron fist. Workers bore
them grudging respect. But resent ment
bubbled too, and curiosity: Every year at
Christmas, at the party Wilson hosted,
the women stared in amazement at her
house, and her Mercedes— unremarkable
for New Canaan but stunning to workers
who wondered how she could afford her
lifestyle on a cafeteria salary.
The sisters clung to their hard-earned
places, absorbing Gluck’s stormy criti-
cism and serving as his enforcers. They
gained Gluck’s trust, which gave them a
degree of power magnified by the district’s
faith in Gluck. The arrangement appeared
to produce remarkable success: The New
Canaan kitchens attracted nation al atten-
tion, upending the notion that school-
cafeteria food was made only to be mocked.
There was a sense that something special
was being created, something best not
meddled with.
THE STUDENTS OF NEW CANAAN
are the sons and daughters of hedge-
fund principals and corporate executives
who make their homes there, drawn
by the town’s guarded seclusion. New
Canaan sits at the end of a commuter-
rail branch, latticed by stone walls and
woods, fortified by strict zoning. The
town is content to play the role of coun-
try squire to its splashier waterfront
neighbors, Westport, Greenwich, and
Darien. Continuity is prized; headlines
are avoided.
When Wilson and Pascarelli first
walked through the doors of New
Ca na an’s schools, in the late 1980s, the
cafeterias served the institutional fare
that is the bane of schoolchildren every-
where: fried this, fried that, droopy every-
thing else. In a district where superlative
was the norm, the cafeterias were outliers.
Wilson herself wrote a letter to adminis-
trators threatening to quit over the quality
of the food.
In 1994, the administration announced
a new hire. Bruce Gluck had grown up in
the Bronx and graduated from the Culi-
nary Institute of America. He arrived with
the passion of an evangelist. “Baby steps
are great in certain situations,” he told
Amy Kalafa, the author of Lunch Wars: How
to Start a School Food Revolution and Win
the Battle for Our Children’s Health. “But
One woman,
a diabetic,
passed out after
a meeting in
Gluck’s office.
Another was so
thrown by his
rage when she
tried to take
home uneaten
pizza that she
wet herself.