Aviation Dining Facility

Did you eat out this weekend? I know of a nice place on Bagram where you can get all-you-can eat delicacies for free on Friday nights! The Aviation DFAC of course...the best place to eat on base. Actually, some might say it's the best place to eat in the country. Why? Because our Dining Facility is the only one in CENTCOM command (which includes Afghanistan and Iraq) with real American Soldiers doing the cooking. Every other place features contracted dining facilities, with cooks and servers from a cross-section of eastern European countries working under a KBR or Fluor contract. In general, their food is generic and bland. Yet somehow, even with the same food suppliers, my cooks work miracles with their materials. Most often this is sans recipe, or maybe something their grandmother taught them years ago.  People come from all over the base just to taste some of that home-cooked goodness. Can you tell I'm proud?

I consider myself an ok cook, but this is on a different scale. We average a headcount of 2,400 servicemembers and civilians daily, serving 3 meals a day, 7 days a week for over a year. All of this with a staff of only 48 Soldiers, split between two shifts. In addition there are 34 Local Nationals (LN's) from Afghanistan who are paid to clean (the worst part of cooking, right?) So, most Friday's I find myself in the Dining Facility to assist with the mission, usually serving on the main line. This week, however, I went behind the scenes to help prepare the Friday feast. My job was to unpack, unwrap, season, and boil over 1,500 lobster tails. This is all accomplished in a huge boiler which can cook a few hundred at a time, but the whole process still took me about 3.5 hours!

The main attraction is probably the steak, which they start making at 10am and keep cooking until 6pm and place in warmers in order to meed the demand.  Actually the guys in my welding shop built this massive grill from scratch, and are obviously quite proud of it also. Also on the menu: fried popcorn shrimp, crab cakes, green bean casserole, lobster bisque, corn on the cob, mac & cheese, and homemade peach cobbler. About the only think my cooks can't do is make pizza, as we are not allowed to order yeast for fear of its possible abuse as a fermenting agent. If you didn't know, alcohol of any type is illegal here, though we do stock near-beers. Lest I forget we also serve 6 flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream every day, yet some people still complain about the lack of variety. Sometimes civilian contractors forget we are in a war zone.

So, if you're ever in Bagram stop by on a Friday night and ask for the commander. I'll make sure you get the best seat in the house.