• FORT CARSON, Colo.
In mid-June, celebrity chef Robert Irvine visited Stack House Bistro here at the base, the second of five military mess overhauls modeled after university dining halls.
The U.S. Army tapped Irvine as one of the architects to help remake their dining options, and Stack House Bistro is one of the results of his, and others, work to reach that goal.
Stack House Bistro at Fort Carson opened in April, and was preceded by Bistro 42 at Fort Hood in February.
New dining halls at Fort Drum in New York, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Stewart in Georgia are slated to open later this year.
Irvine’s goal is to open a campus-style dining hall at all 176 Army dining facilities, and stock each with an executive chef and on-site dietician.
THE TOUR
According to The Colorado Sun, during his tour at the Fort Carson facility, Irvine visited each food station, pointing at items, lobbing questions at packs of chefs and gesturing around the room.
Morgan Lerro, Stack House Bistro’s retail manager, presented Irvine with a Pink Cadillac smoothie, a blend of dragon fruit, pineapple, orange juice, acai and vanilla protein powder.
Lerro rattled off the ingredients while she walked the bright pink smoothie toward him. “With 25-35 grams of protein,” she added.
Lerro then brought out another shake, The Perfect 10, a blend of blueberries, bananas, peanut butter and protein powder. She used low-fat milk and added extra scoops of protein, bumping the total up to 55-60 grams.
THE PROBLEM
A few years ago, the Army acknowledged a severe lack of healthy and appealing food options for Soldiers living on bases.
While official dining facilities adhered to strict nutritional standards, the food was often so bland that Soldiers preferred to spend their money at the nearest pizza joint.
Another issue was the operating hours of dining facilities, which often pushed Soldiers to buy lunch from grab-and-go kiosks on the weekends and during odd breaks in the day.
Around the same time, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) — now known as the Department of War (DoW) — had not established a formal process for making food decisions, and was not adequately tracking its food-related costs, making any kind of reform nearly impossible to begin.
Irvine became involved to fix this problem, with the goal of converting dining facilities from one-size-fits-all cafeterias into campus-style dining halls, with different counters offering a variety of foods, including full meals, smoothies and snacks.
THE SOLUTION
As described by The Colorado Sun, Stack House Bistro has various counters serving pizza, tacos, burgers and a rotating selection of “global cuisines” surrounding a large salad bar.
Soldiers can order up to $39 worth of food each day using their meal cards. Family members, veterans and visiting civilians can also dine at the new hall, paying for items a la carte.
Digital menus at each food station rate items according to a stoplight colored system: green means eat often, yellow means eat occasionally, and red means eat rarely.
There are small symbols to signify “alerts” like high amounts of sodium or sugar, and the nutritional content is displayed next to every item.
The facility is serving around 3,000 meals per day, according to Jason Hays, vice president of operations for Compass, the hospitality company contracted to open the first five dining halls.
The troops piled their trays with falafel wraps and warm jerk chicken bowls and red velvet cupcakes made with quinoa and fat-free cream cheese.
They made their way swiftly through checkout lines and spilled into the dining room, where they sat in clusters at long tables.
“We give them the best boats, the best ships, the best submarines, the best uniforms, the best rifles,” Irvine told The Colorado Sun. “How about the best nutrition?”
Source: The Colorado Sun (https://coloradosun.com/2026/06/22/fort-carson-soldiers-get-new-dining-options-thanks-to-celebrity-chef/)
Edited by Larry Lapka
