FEATURES
first time, he works with the sous chef
in charge of the station to get it down.
Guests’ choices are the pizza station;
the grill (burgers and hot sandwiches
alternately); entrée station, featuring two
entrées and four sides; deli sandwiches
made to order; prepared food to go;
prepared salads made in front of guests;
soups; and an exhibition or chef station.
For the creativity it affords, Pangaud most
enjoys this station, which changes daily.
One day in November, the menu was
spinach risotto with shellfish stew.
purchase is up to them, says Chris
Mellender, executive chef of Cafe 300
in Chicago. He is in charge of the five
stations in the dining facility of the
58-story building in mid-downtown,
which opened in March 2009. The
biggest tenant, occupying 29 floors,
is the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
One of the differences between cooking
in restaurants and in B&I is the smaller
B&I budget because of lower guest prices.
Most entrées at Marriott headquarters are
$5.29. “As a chef, your interest is good
food with less-expensive ingredients. You
need more talent to make something good
with a smaller budget,” Pangaud says.
You get to flex more culinary muscles
working in B&I, says Chris Mellender,
executive chef of Cafe 300 in Chicago
for Compass Group North America
based in Charlotte, N.C., which
operates Eurest Dining Services in the
B&I segment.
CORPORATE BENEFITS AND
CHALLENGES
One of the cost-control measures, not
only for Sodexo accounts, but for other
contract management companies, is
the economy of scale in purchasing.
Chefs must make their purchases from
prescribed suppliers to take advantage
of the combined buying power and as a
food safety measure.
Mellender, who has been involved in
restaurants since age 16, started with
Cafe 300 as lead cook of the entrée
station when the building opened. When
the original executive chef didn’t work
out, he stepped up and took over. At age
25, he has six cooks who report to him,
he oversees catering for all the building
clients except Kirkland & Ellis, and he
had a hand in qualifying the operation
to become a certified Center for
Excellence—a prestigious designation
afforded to a few Compass Group
accounts as showcase operations that
carefully follow company best practices.
The National Culinary Review | January 2011
At Compass Group North America
based in Charlotte, N.C., which operates
Eurest Dining Services in the B&I
segment, chefs have certain suppliers
and product specs they must adhere
to, but how they prepare the items they
He most appreciates that he is not locked
into a certain menu as he would be with
a restaurant. What he didn’t realize, going
from lead cook to executive chef, was the
higher level of multitasking. “You have to
be prepared to handle it all, like being a
catering chef, cafe chef, and handle all
pricing from chicken fingers to foie gras,”
Mellender says. “In restaurants, you have to
do that, too, but this takes it to a whole new
level. One day you can be cashiering and
the next day doing crème brûlée on the fly.”
“Someone at my age ( 25) wouldn’t
be allowed this much creativity and
availability to do different things in their
career,” though he also admits that
he won’t get the recognition he would
get at a restaurant such as Chicago’s
Alinea. “But I’m doing molecular
gastronomy for an event soon, learning
on my own.”
Variety is the spice of B&I life most
appreciated by Marina Gonzales, executive
chef for Eurest Dining Services at the
headquarters of Sony Electronics Inc. in
San Diego. The facilities she oversees are
Sony Skyview Cafe, with its varied stations,
and Sony Club West, which seats about
160 guests, with curtained partitions used
for private catering and special lunch
gatherings. She came to the company
from a vast catering background, which,
she says, served as boot camp for the
broad range of responsibilities she has at
