What boarders eat at PSSEMR

Mealtimes

Meals are served across several dining halls rather than one large mess, which keeps sittings smaller and quieter. The school also teaches table manners and talks to students about the value of food and reducing waste.

The 14-day menu

Everything is vegetarian.

Worth stating plainly, because it is unusual: this is what the kitchen actually serves, published in full. Most schools publish a representative menu, a photograph of one, or nothing at all.

What appears most days

• Fruits at the mid-morning break — every single day, across all fourteen.
• A green salad with lunch on ten of the fourteen days — carrot, cucumber, onion, sweet corn, mixed vegetable. Kosambari appears on two more.
• Chapathi at dinner on eleven of fourteen days, with jowar roti and ragi mudde on the others.
• Badam milk, Horlicks, Boost, coffee or tea at breakfast, every day.

A note on the range: the cycle moves from ragi mudde and jowar roti to pav bhaji, pani puri, French fries and pizza-adjacent evening snacks — North Karnataka staples alongside food a twelve-year-old actually wants to eat. That balance is deliberate, and it is unusual to see written down.

What is on every plate, every day

Some things do not rotate.

A salad course with every lunch

Cucumber, carrot and onion, or kosambari, or sprouts.

A nutrition supplement with every lunch

Moringa powder, curry leaf powder, agasi powder, shenga pudi, puttani pudi or gurellu powder, served with pappad and pickle. These are traditional Karnataka nutrition powders, ground from flaxseed, groundnut, roasted gram and niger seed, and they are how a school kitchen adds protein and micronutrients to a rice-based meal without anyone having to be persuaded to eat something unfamiliar.

Badam milk

Daily.

Where the food comes from

The school keeps its own dairy herd of Gir cows, supplying milk to the kitchen. Gir is an Indian breed kept for milk quality rather than yield. The dairy is one of the campus systems described under the green campus.

The store room is locked. Access to the larder is restricted to the professional cooks; nobody else goes in.

How the kitchen is run

The school publishes its kitchen standard operating procedure in full. Some of what it sets out:

• Every food service employee holds a medical certificate obtained within a week of joining, is tested monthly at an authorised laboratory, and has those reports reviewed by a doctor.
• Food-contact surfaces are sanitised between uses whenever known allergens are handled — tree nuts, peanuts, gluten products, dairy and soy are named in the procedure — and any time contamination is suspected.
• Temperatures are recorded twice for every item — when it leaves the kitchen and when it is served — on a food production register kept per meal.
• There is a written food recall procedure covering segregation, inventory reconciliation and notifying every dining hall.
• A complaint book and a feedback register are mandatory records, alongside a pest control log, monthly stock verification and a cost-per- student calculation each month.

Read the Mess standard operating procedure (PDF) in full, or the rest of the published school policies.

Day scholars

Day scholars can take meals too — breakfast, morning snack, lunch and evening snack — for a monthly charge. Once taken, it is charged for the full academic year. The current rate is set by the annual fee circular; see fees or ask the school office for the figure that applies to this year.

Common questions

Can my child get a snack outside mealtimes?

Outside food and drink are on the list of items students may not bring, and all meals come from the school kitchen. There is a campus café, Rendezvous, with a self-service counter, which also serves parents visiting on birthdays, festivals and other celebrations. Food bought there is paid for and may not be carried to a classroom, hostel or dining hall. The cafeteria usage procedure (PDF) sets out the rest.

Who cooks the food?

Professional cooks, with the store room restricted to them, each holding a medical certificate and tested monthly.

What if my child doesn’t like something?

Every lunch carries a salad, pappad and pickle alongside the main meal. A complaint book for students and a feedback register are both mandatory records in the kitchen procedure, so there is a route for saying so.

Is the milk from outside?

Partly from the school’s own herd.

Come and see a lunch service

The dining halls are the easiest thing on campus to judge for yourself. Visit at 12:20 on a school day and look. The rest of a boarder’s day is set out in the full daily routine, and boarding at PSSEMR covers the hostels themselves. Health, safeguarding and campus safety are under student care and safety.