Menus des cantines francais OU restauration scolaire

French school canteens offer a full hot lunch to millions of primary and secondary students every day. Students use a plastic swipe card (rechargable: paid for by parents) to enter the canteen at 12 noon. They line up and take the already-loaded plates from a counter, which helps with portion control. (Perhaps the real reason French women don't get fat...?)
It works out to about $4 AUD per lunch, per kid. The canteens are bound by law to provide a nutritionally-balanced and varied meal, and the same meal hardly ever turns up twice. No matter how many thousand meals per day some of the canteens serve, variation and culinary tradition are the name of the game.
I am always fascinated by the lovely old-fashioned meals you find at the canteen. To me, they represent a history of home cooking, local regional food and training the tastebuds of the next generation, as only the French can.

At the Collège public Léonard de Vinci, in Saint-Thibault des Vignes, (near Paris), they're having (selections from their weekly menu):

Entrees

• Macédoine mayonnaise various cooked cubed vegetables with a mayo dressing
• Salade hollandaise carrots, celery, cauliflower and batavia beans
• Tomates vinaigrette tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing
• Salade parmentière potatoes, vinaigrette, herbs and seasoning

Mains

• Omelette
• Mini haché de boeuf bourguignon mini beef patty with a rich tomato and wine sauce
• Sauté de dinde, sauce colombo turkey with spicy Creole sauce
• Filet de colin pané breadcrumbed fillet of hake
  

Sides

• Coquillettes shell pasta
• Haricots verts green beans
• Semoule semolina
• Choux fleur béchamel cauliflower in bechamel sauce
  

Cheese

• Camembert
• Petit suisse aux fruits soft cow's cheese with fruit
• Saint Paulin creamy soft cheese
• Yaourt aromatisé sweet flavoured yoghurt
  

Dessert

• Fruit
• Gaufre pâtissière au sucre sweet sugared waffles
• Flan à la vanille vanilla flan