There is a slow, methodical order to obtaining a meal inside the Carson Hall dining facility. You enter; you pay a fee; you pick out a tray, napkin and eating utensils; you select your food; you sit down and you eat -- a deliberate process from beginning to end. There is, however, a flurry of activity going on beneath your feet.

Carson Hall also contains the central kitchen, or commissary kitchen, and the person managing all the activity in the kitchen changed in June 2003 when registered dietitian Elva Koepp stepped down after 30 years of service and chef Doug Lang was hired.

Doug Lang became chef of the Carson Hall central kitchen last year

Why did the University of Oregon hire a chef instead of another registered dietitian?

"The registered dietitian position was appropriate 20 or 30 years ago when the expectation was to provide a nutritious meal at the lowest possible price," Tom P. Driscoll, the University of Oregon's food services director, wrote in a recent e-mail response to questions. "Today's students have a higher expectation. They have a wider range of experiences, tastes and international representation."

"In order for us to provide for the students of today and the future, I believe we need to have a group of employees with strong culinary skills that include a balanced education in culinary arts, nutrition, food safety and food management," Driscoll said.

Lang began his culinary career as a bus boy in 1978. From there he worked his way up through dishwasher, prep cook, line cook, rounds person and apprentice.

Lang graduated from a three-year American Culinary Federation national apprenticeship program in 1988, and he spent the next five years as a sous (French for under) chef at The Waverly Country Club in Portland. Lang described the sous-chef position as being "second-in-charge" to the chef.

Lang has also worked as the food service manager at Pleasant Valley Golf in Clackamas, as an executive chef at the Town Club in Eugene and most recently as the food service manager at Hynix Electronics in Eugene.

"As of now I am a certified 'culinarian'," Lang said, "and I am working toward becoming a certified executive chef."

Lang's current staff includes one sous chef, 10 cooks, two office staffers, three warehouse workers and about 25 students per term who spend approximately 20 hours a week each working in the commissary kitchen in two-hour shifts. "Every term you lose some, so there is a lot of training going into student labor," Lang said, but the labor is necessary because more items are being made from scratch.

Chocolate chip mint meringue cookies in a pure chocolate bowl.

Making more things from scratch is just one of the changes in the kitchen. Another change is presentation. Presentation? "You buy it first with your eyes," Lang said.

What does the future hold? "Our goal is to do whatever we can to improve the food at the university, whether it is to student dining halls, whether it is to catering, whether it is to football games or training tables. We want to make sure we can put out the best product we can," Lang said.

Driscoll agrees. "I would like to see the central kitchen improve the quality of the product they produce to be comparable to the best restaurants and exceed the student's expectations for freshness, taste and presentation. I would like to see the kitchen develop a core group of specialty or signature items that people crave and are in high demand from students and faculty in the dining locations on campus. Finally, we would do these things in the safest, most cost-effective methods possible," Driscoll said.

"We are always testing new recipes," Lang said. If you have eaten something at the University of Oregon lately that you enjoyed, or something that you did not enjoy, e-mail Tom Driscoll.