THE NEW YORK TIMES – Luis Reina was preparing dinner for a crowd: turkey stew, rice and cucumber salad. The recipes were simple — chop the vegetables, brown the meat — but the process was anything but straightforward.
Each box of ingredients had to be searched for contraband. The knife was tethered to the counter by a sturdy chain, and the metal spoons came from a cabinet flanked by security guards.
The sharp-edged lids from tomato cans had to be tossed into a trash can inside a locked cage. Several kitchen assistants were clad in jumpsuits and carefully patted down before they could start work on the meal — for 3,800 people.
Mr. Reina, 56, is a cook on Rikers Island, New York City’s notorious 415-acre jail complex in Queens. He commutes two hours from Flatbush, Brooklyn, to prepare meals for the jail population and staff alongside roughly 50 other cooks in the larger of two kitchens on the island.
A magnetometer sits in the middle of a long hallway with gates visible in the background.
Priya Krishna and Brittainy Newman twice visited Rikers Island, where they were granted extensive access to a kitchen, its cooks and the detainees who assist them.
The long walk to the kitchen at the Anna M. Kross Center requires passing through several gates and a metal detector.
Some detainees, all nonviolent offenders, work in the Rikers kitchens and earn an hourly wage of $1.45.
He says he’s frustrated by the poor quality of the meals, in which every ingredient and recipe has been dictated by the city Department of Correction.
Most vegetables and fruit arrive at the jail canned or frozen. Salt is off the table, banned since 2014 for health reasons.
“People say the food on Rikers Island is nasty, and they are looking at the cooks,” Mr. Reina said. “I only cook what I was told to cook.”
“This new program — which doesn’t eliminate meat but incorporates more vegetable dishes like chana masala and spinach artichoke pasta — is a key mission for Mayor Eric Adams and his Office of Food Policy, who have directed the city’s hospitals and schools to offer more plant-based meals”
But the food is getting its most significant overhaul in roughly 15 years. A year ago, the city received a $100,000 grant from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, a group fighting climate change, to develop plant-based recipes for Rikers and retrain its cooks.
The old menu “was heavy on carbs and heavy on processing,” said Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the city’s correction commissioner …
