Catering
Menus:
Dining is an important aspect of boarding at Barnard Castle School as mealtimes bring us together as a community. Not only does the dining hall provide a unique social setting but it also helps us to reinforce our care for boarders by providing them with high quality, nutritious meals and educating them on the benefits of enjoying a balanced diet and leading healthy, active lives.
Boarders generally take all their meals together. Breakfast, lunch and tea are freshly prepared daily and served by our in-school catering team. Breakfast is served at 7.35am and tea is at 5.15pm. Boarders may be joined by day pupils who have the option of arriving early for breakfast and staying for tea, Monday-Friday. Lunch is taken as a whole school in our magnificent panelled dining hall. Boarders eat lunch with the day pupils. Our summer and winter seasonal menus are rotated on a three weekly basis to provide plenty of variety and choice from a range of hot and cold main courses, including a full salad bar. Popular lunch choices include Wednesday’s carvery and fish and chip Friday. Breakfast choices change daily as well, varying between continental, waffles and pancakes and full English.
Boarders are, of course, fully catered for at weekends too. Saturday tea is a relaxed occasion, generally with a theme such as burger night, Chinese night or panini night. Sunday breakfast is substantial and is followed by Sunday roast in the evening, which can be served at lunch or teatime depending upon the boarders’ activities schedule. When boarders are on excursions, the school catering team supplies healthy packed lunches, or sometimes they eat out.
We can cater for special dietary needs and allergies, with menu items marked as vegan, vegetarian or gluten-free. Menus are available for pupils and parents to view at any time and our Catering Manager is always keen to discuss specific requirements. The serving team are very well informed about individual pupils’ needs and also about the ingredients within each dish. Local suppliers, such as Organic Acorn Dairy and Peat’s Butchers, are used as much as possible. The views of pupils are important to us and boarders have the chance to contribute to the development of catering through the boarding Food Committee, which provides a regular forum for sharing their views with the Catering Manager and Headmaster.
Additional catering options for day pupils.
Day pupils do have the option to join our boarders for breakfast and tea, this can help ease the pressure on parents for drop off and pick up. This is a popular and valuable option for Sixth Form students when they want to stay into the evening to study or revise.
Fine Dining
As some of our chefs have had previous experience of working in restaurants and hotels, they are able to offer a superb standard of food to suit a more high-end dining experience. Out Sixth Formers have several formal dinners over the course of their two years. One of which is the finale of our Year 12 Confidence Course.
