Cooked here, and eaten sitting down
There is a kitchen in this building and a cook in it. Everything is made on site from a four-week rotating menu, and educators eat the same meal at the same table.
Catered childcare food is not, on the whole, bad. It is just anonymous — arriving in trays, reheated, plated out of sight, eaten fast. What is lost is not nutrition. It is the fifty minutes a day in which children handle real crockery, serve each other, pour from a jug they can lift, negotiate the last of something and clear their own place.
So there is a kitchen here and Ana cooks in it. She plans a four-week rotating menu, buys from two local suppliers and the beds outside, and she knows every allergy in the building by name and by face.
Meals are served family-style: bowls on the table, children serving themselves as soon as they can hold a spoon, an educator sitting down and eating the same food. It takes longer than a plated service. It is the single most social hour of the day.
Allergies, anaphylaxis and choking risk
Medical — never recoloured
- A child with a diagnosed food allergy cannot start until we hold a written allergy action plan signed by their physician — the allergen, the symptoms, the treatment, and your consent to give it.
- Allergen information is posted in the kitchen and at every point of service, with the child's photograph. Allergen-free meals are plated first, in the kitchen, and carried out separately.
- Epinephrine auto-injectors are stored unlocked, at room temperature, in a labelled box in the room the child is in — not in a locked office and not in the kitchen. They travel with the child on every outing.
- Any epinephrine administration is followed immediately by a 911 call, whatever the child looks like afterwards, and you are called from the ambulance.
- Every educator trains annually on recognising and treating anaphylaxis, and practises on a trainer device.
- High-risk choking foods are never served: whole grapes, hot dog rounds, whole nuts, popcorn, hard raw carrot, marshmallows, chunks of hard cheese. Grapes and cherry tomatoes are quartered lengthways for every child under four.
- Children always eat sitting down, with an adult at the table. Nobody eats walking, in a pram, or in a car seat.
- We are a nut-free building. We know that is imperfect protection and we do it anyway.
When a child does not want to eat
Nobody here is made to eat anything, ever. Trying is invited and never required. Food is never a reward and never a punishment, no child sits at the table until a plate is finished, and nobody is told they are a good eater or a fussy one.
What a child ate goes home on the day sheet as information, not as a verdict. If a child stops eating for more than a few days we tell you, because it is usually the first sign of something else — a tooth, a virus, a new baby at home.
Toddlers eat almost nothing for weeks and then eat everything for a fortnight. That is normal, it is exhausting, and it is not a thing to be fixed at the table.
Stay for lunch
Tour families are welcome to stay through the 11:45 service and eat with a room. It is noisy, slow and the most honest twenty minutes we can show you.