Don Cleavin – Navy Chefs

When people talk about submarines, they always say about poor food. I never experienced poor food at all.

You’d kill your Chef if the food was not very good, but the Navy Chefs are always good.

I’ve never seen a really bad one, and you an allowance of feeding materials, more than surface ships do.

Simon Well, like you say the Chef is the most popular person onboard.

Yeah. The only times you had problems with food was when you were at the end of a patrol, end of a trip. All your fresh stuff had long since gone.

You were eating stuff out of tins, but it was still good food. The favourite food was of course what we called ‘Cheese Ush’.

Simon Cheese?

Cheese Ush. U-S-H. It’s like a Quiche Lorraine basically, only it’s not like a Quiche Lorraine. It’s like in a dish, a pastry case and it’s got tons and tons of grated cheese in it and grated onion. I think maybe a bit of egg in there as well.

You grate it into the case, until it’s about that deep. Then you do it again (laughs).