And are there other navies who follow the same tradition?
Define “best food”.
I have no personal experience, but considering that nuclear subs these days go on long cruises without the need to refuel, I suspect that the food is going to become pretty mundane towards the end.
I think, anecdotally that the navy gets fed better than the other two services, but a catering department that can get frequent supplies of fresh food is likely to offer better quality and variety than one that has to live out of the freezer.
From my understanding (having roomed with a submariner for 6 months while deployed), the food is excellent for the first few days of a submarine’s deployment. The rest of the voyage, not so much.
In my experience, the Air Force has the most variety, but then I was never on board a ship of any sort. I ate in a lot of chow halls over my career, and would rate them as AF, then Navy, with Army/Marine in a tie for last and worst. In the case of Navy chow, the one outlier were the Seabee chow halls, which served uniformly bad food.
Chow-wise, I’d rate Air Force an A, Army a B, Regular Navy a C, and Sub Corps under C.
Seems to me that the best food is found at the Training Centers where they have cook’s schools.
Reasons:
- No issues about supply of fresh ingredients. Being away at sea or in some distant outpost doesn’t figure into the equation.
- The students are being evaluated (“graded”) on the quality of their cooking. It BETTER be good, or else.
- The instructors are selected for being the best at what they do. In the case of cook’s schools, it’s cooking.
The US Coast Guard’s Training Center Petaluma dining hall was absolutely superb for this reason.
If so, might it be due to the fact that submariners may go months without any exposure to sunlight, etc.?
groan
I think there might be some issues with oxygen content and air pressure which can affect a food’s taste.
I served on a submarine (fast attack, not a Trident missile submarine) in the middle 2000s for ~4 years. The food was okay in general, and largely dependant on which cook (Culinary Specialist) was on duty. If we had one of the less skilled cooks, the food was pretty bad. If we had one of the better cooks, it was good or (rarely) great.
We ran out of fresh vegetables and fruits after a week or two. Usually we pulled into a port and replenished supplies every month or so.
Some people gained weight on long underway periods – there’s not a lot to do, so food can be a way to fight boredom. I typically lost weight – sleep could be at a premium, and I would often sleep through meals. I’m a big guy, though, so this wasn’t a problem.
I have read that the food on board Typhoon class Russian boats was excellent. Then again, that had a sauna, a swimming pool and a smoking room. Those were luxury submarines,
yes, I do remember seeing that on one of those history channel military shows or some show like that
As a brother of the pin (fast attack, Sturgeon and LA class), I have to agree with some of this. It did depend greatly on which cook was on duty that day. Some of our cooks on the boat could make a 3 course meal with nothing more then a can of tuna and a stale roll… some could burn water.
Typically, boats carry a 90 day load out of food. Sometimes more depending on mission. Most of that is powdered, canned, or frozen. Fresh food like milk, fruits and veggies last about twoish weeks. Not so much because they spoil, but because we use them first. Meats are usually kept frozen until needed.
Every morning, between midnight and 4 am, our baker would make bread. There is nothing in this world quite like the smell of fresh bread.
While on deployment, a boat will pull in from time to time for supplies. Timing depends greatly on mission. A few times we had to make due with “rations”. Rations are just the non-fresh food.
Overall, I would say our food was good, sometimes great. I served doing the end of the Cold War, don’t know if that makes a difference, but we seemed for the most part to have a good sized food budget. Our Chop, the supply officer, would do what he could to make sure we had good food and his cooks were well trained. We did have a fair amount of chicken and cheaper food stuff, but he would make sure we had some prime rib, lobster, steak, and all the white and chocolate milk we could suck down.
Boats, for the most part, have a relatively small crew. My last boat, the USS New York City (SSN 696), had a crew of 140. But normally, we went to sea with about 120, give or take. About half to 2/3’s of the crew would normally eat during one of the four meal periods. So our cooks didn’t have to make a lot. Compare that with a carrier that can have upwards of 6000 people on board.
All in all, while our food wasn’t the bestest in the world, we did eat well. The best gallery while I was in the Navy was the Subase Gallery in Pearl Harbor HI. While I was stationed there, they won the Navy’s Golden Anchor award several times. I think they won all four years I was there.
I served on a fast attack submarine, and did one patrol on a ballistic missile submarine as well.
In my experience, the food was decent, but definitely went down in quality once we ran out of fresh food (i.e. milk, eggs, etc.).
There were two large refrigeration units (“reefers”) on my submarine. On short weekly ops, one of the reefers was used for frozen food, and one was used for refrigerated food. On extended deployments, though, both reefers were converted to freezer units from the start, so no fresh food was available from the start. We did have (frozen) steak and lobster at least one or two meals in a typical deployment, though.
One thing I noticed in particular was milk. Once the fresh milk ran out, they switched to this awful dehydrated mix (referred to as “plastic cow.”). Eggs would last in the cool bilge area back in the engine room for a few weeks. When they ran out, they switched to powdered eggs.
Towards the end of one deployment, we started to run out of everything. One memorable meal was random types of pasta with gravy, beans, and beets.
We bought supplies in Norway on one deployment, and the food was far superior to our normal food. The soft-serve ice cream mix was particularly good. It was the one time that the soft-serve ice cream machines made decent ice cream.
The food supplied to the missile submarines was markedly better than that given to fast attack subs. For example, we had all kinds of random no-name food brands (like “Jasper’s Brand Peanut Butter”); they had “Jif”. Once we were in drydock in King’s Bay, Georgia (a missile submarine base), and our supply officer (“Chop”) tried to buy some food for the boat from the base, only to be told that it was only for the missile boats. So he made friends with the supply officer of one of the missile boats and bought $75,000 of food from their boat…basically cleaned them completely out. We spend half a day transferring all of the food from their boat to ours. Then the missile boat supply officer turned around and resupplied from the base. 
The oxygen percentage tended to vary a bit, but the air pressure was generally at or very near one standard atmosphere. The bigger issue was the lack of ventilation and trace contaminants.
Brothers of which pin?
Hey you squids (and I do say that lovingly), how does the chow on a sub rate as compared to on another ship, or in a chow hall?
A jarhead here, and I think MREs are pretty good. Especially if you’re hungry. C-Rats were better than when MREs first came out, usually, although the MREs in recent years have gotten pretty good. I served in 1980-1993.
So how does sub chow compare to your other chow hall experiences, afloat or on land?
The Submarine Warfare insignia (“dolphin” pin).
Never ate on another type of ship, but the chow halls in shore facilities were generally significantly better than submarine food, in my experience.