Saint Thomas Academy has a well-deserved reputation for feeding the minds and spirits of Cadets. But someone has to feed their bellies, too. Enter Sage Dining Chef Tari Tanhoff.

Chef Tari leads eight teammates in a kitchen that has somehow fed about 600 ravenously hungry teenage boys every school day for the past three years, while also handling event catering and in-house concessions. A typical day in that herculean effort includes:

-        Arriving on campus at 6 a.m. to help her team start breakfast

-        Overseeing the two teammates who get breakfast out, as the others prepare for lunch that starts service at 11:30

-        Making nutritional calculations, placing ingredient orders for meals on upcoming days, navigating constant interruptions for questions, and facing unforeseen challenges, such as pandemic-driven supply chain issues.

If that sounds like a lot to handle, understand that Chef Tari was made for it. Raised in Montevideo, she got into the food and beverage mix at age 18, working for her grandmother at Boyd Liquor Store, and then bartending until realizing she “enjoyed working with food more than working with alcohol.”

Chef Tari moved to the Twin Cities and graduated top of her class at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. Career stops included work as a culinary arts instructor for the Hubert H. Humphrey Job Corps and positions with Aramark at the Minnesota Vikings practice facility and later as a personal chef for certain players on the Timberwolves team. “I was paid to fatten them up,” she quipped, “so my background in French cooking with a lot of butter and cream came in handy.”

It should come as some comfort that Chef Tari’s years of experience feeding pro athletes informs how she fuels Cadet sports teams. One trick of her trade is a baking-soda-and-salt-infused sports drink mix. Another is ensuring that each day’s menu offers items for the day before a competition, the day of a competition, and the day after a competition.

The variety of needs among athletes creates complexity in her menu planning, but Chef Tari counters that with a simple philosophy; “Find out what they like. I put out surveys. I talk with the guys. Most of them are really good eaters. They’re very conscientious about what they eat.”

In coming weeks and months, Chef Tari will up her game even further while helping the Academy’s athletes do the same. Now, a running-man icon near food choices for athletes guides them in their selections, but as soon as February she plans to roll out new signage with additional information.

As accommodating as Chef Tari seems, she does draw boundaries. For example, she does not give into frequent requests (maybe in jest) for steak and shrimp, because “it’s just not feasible for us to offer a nice porterhouse to 600 young men.”

And, though General Tso’s Chicken is by far the favorite dish in the Academy’s cafeteria, Chef Tari holds to a four-week menu cycle. “We have to offer variety,” she said. “We want to expand people’s taste buds.” So, while waiting for their monthly ration of General Tso’s, Chef Tari’s customers enjoy other favorites: “grilled cheese and tomato soup, burgers, anything Mexican, and pulled chicken and pulled pork.”

Chef Tari’s work goes well beyond just making sure nobody leaves campus hungry. She runs a week-long summer camp, usually for a dozen or so students, who compete on teams in a format similar to the TV show, “Chopped.” Occasionally she hosts health classes to provide extra education in nutrition.

With ongoing renovations to the campus, she hopes to engage in display cooking, and she said that “Mr. Woodard is on-board” with an idea for a new basic cooking class for graduating seniors to prepare them for the choices they’ll face after high school. The primary takeaways she hopes students in that class will gain are “portion control is a good thing, and that they should try new foods.”

With all that could go wrong, given the moving parts involved in feeding at least two meals per day to at least 600 students, the one thing that never worries Chef Tari is the quality of the people she works with and for. “The Cadets are great young men, polite and fun to talk to,” she said. “I like the whole atmosphere here. The faculty and staff are fun, and they like each other and the Cadets. My team is fantastic. I’m blessed.”