The school catering is often criticised, including by students, although recognised as a public service. The meals served at school inspire a great deal of apprehension, negative feelings and rumours among students, even when they don't eat at the canteen. The aim of this study is to understand how these representations take shape, using the INRAE's CORALIM survey, a participatory research project carried out since 2010, in a middle school located in a low-income neighborhood. The students involved in the participatory part of the research, in 2021-22 and 2023-24, took part in a survey conducted on site, to gain a better understanding of the genesis of the representations of the school meal and the catering professions. The research was carried out at two levels. In 2022, 6th grade students were observed interviewing school and catering staff. These observations were combined with frocus groups where students were talking about catering jobs, and about the content of the school meal of the day. This survey was supplemented by individual interviews with some of their parents. In 2024, the focus groups were repeated with the same children, now in 8th grade, and observations were conducted in the canteen, while student were eating. The initial survey highlighted the lack of awareness of school catering services, including at local level, where everyone - from pupils to parents and school staff - is unaware of the real nature of the service (local kitchen), which is considered a priori to be dependent on a poor quality and distant municipal kitchen. Then, it appears that the canteen, which is increasingly used as a space for food and health education, is far from being an object of communication about the school catering setting itself, or about the staff who work there. Even when students and adults discover and understand that the food is cooked on site (not delivered from a distant industrial kitchen) using ‘real’ and qualitative products, their opinion does not change positively, or even worsens. However, the disqualification of the school catering service varies according to the gender and social background of the children.