Allendale school cafeteria ‘Soup King’ wins National Black Chefs Association awards

ALLENDALE — David Bannister leaves his home in Paterson in the early morning darkness and starts his workday at Northern Highlands Regional High School long before the first bleary-eyed student has trudged through the entrance.

The Paterson-born chef and his team of 14 cafeteria workers begin prep at 5 a.m. for a food service that will eventually feed 1,300 students.

On one recent school day, the cafeteria team worked with the synchronicity of an orchestra as it sliced fresh vegetables and roasted chicken breasts — exactly 450 cutlets. Then, Bannister turned his attention to the stove where his soup of the day burbled in a stock pot.

This is what he’s known for. The students call him the Soup King. Each recipe is made from scratch, and the ingredients in his latest concoction, Buffalo chicken soup, tingle on the tongue.

“That’s what we do here,” Bannister said with a big smile after taste-testing his latest creation.

'He’s a great asset'

Bannister worked his way up from dishwasher to head chef at Pomptonian Food Service, the company hired by the Allendale school district.

Now he is being recognized with two awards from the National Black Chefs Association in Chicago.

“We wanted to recognize what he’s doing for the school — it’s hard work that starts early in the morning making hot meals for the children and faculty,” said Bernard Talley, president of the trade association, adding that Bannister was nominated by the noted Paterson-born chef Rasul York. “He’s a great asset for the association and the city of Paterson.”

Bannister is a man of few words. His food does the talking, and his dishes speak many languages. In addition to the regular menu, the school cafeteria offers an international station with Chinese sweet-and-sour-chicken, Polish kielbasa and Italian tortellini.

The breadth of his culinary knowledge seems even more impressive considering that he never attended culinary school. Now he is being appointed chapter president in the chefs' association.

The organization, founded more than a decade ago, began giving out awards in 2018 in different disciplines, including for pastry chefs, cake artists, grillmasters, caterers, even ice carvers. In addition to the Hall of Fame honors, Bannister won an award usually reserved for chefs working in traditional restaurants.

“He could work anywhere — he could run a restaurant,” David Pretini, Pomptonian’s food service director, said about Bannister. “But I think he likes what he’s doing because he has the freedom to do what he wants.”

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'I trust him implicitly'

Pretini says the workday begins with a brainstorming session with Bannister in which they decide the menu, then he leaves Bannister to his own devices.

“I’ll tell him to make chicken-and-rice soup and he makes it however he likes,” Pretino said. “I trust him implicitly — I know it’s going to come out right.”

Lunch begins at 11 a.m., but students begin lining up at the counters much earlier. In fact, the issue of students sneaking off to the cafeteria became so prevalent that the head office had to institute a rule not to sell food before a certain hour.

“The teachers all complained that students were coming to class late,” Pretini said.

This isn’t the cafeteria food that most people endured as schoolchildren. No mystery meat is on the menu. This is restaurant-quality food. And if the students of Northern Highlands weren’t so generous with their gratitude, it would make a person envy them.

Instead, the walls of the kitchen are lined with thank-you notes addressed to Bannister and student-drawn portraits. Brooke Xu, a junior, even wrote a story about Bannister for the school newspaper.

The most ostentatious display of the school’s appreciation for Bannister is a banner hung in the lobby, right next to the trophy case where the Highlanders boast their athletic and scholastic achievements.

“He’s an institution here,” Scot Beckerman, the school’s superintendent, told Paterson Press. “We wanted to make sure the parents and kids, when they come to school, know he’s being recognized.”

Beckerman said that in his 30 years working as an administrator, he’s never met a chef of Bannister’s caliber working in the school system. The superintendent said he is so fond of Bannister’s comfort foods like meatloaf and chili that he no longer needs to leave the premises for his midday break.

“I used to go home for lunch,” he said. “Now I eat lunch in the cafeteria with the kids.”

Darren Tobia is a contributing writer for Paterson Press.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Allendale NJ school cafeteria wins national Black Cchef awards