Hospital Food Will Be Forever Changed

Chefs looking for a burgeoning opportunity can find it in hospitals.

When you say the words “hospital food” to most people, it conjures up thoughts of cafeteria food that barely serves its purpose of ensuring someone is fed – gray mashed potatoes, meat that looks and feels like a brick, et cetera. Given that, it would be easy to understand why high profile, well-trained chefs would steer away from working in a hospital.

But Chef Brian Sauer, Executive Chef at South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, says that will no longer be the case as hospital cuisine is already in the process of evolving.

Chef Sauer, a veteran of three-star New York City restaurants including Chanterelle, Gotham Bar & Grill, Gramercy Tavern and Le Bernardin, began his role at Northwell Health nearly six years ago. Although when he was first approached for this position Chef Sauer thought this was not where his career should be headed, after further consideration he recalled when his father was dying in a Florida hospital. A Navy veteran who enjoyed his daily meat and potatoes, “at the very end of his life, he was unable to enjoy a good meal and was miserable every day with his food,” Chef Sauer said. “That needed to change, and that opportunity was right in front of me. I figured with my culinary education and experience that just maybe I could make a difference in creating and serving delicious and nutritious food to an industry with a bad reputation for a long time.”

Now, Chef Sauer visits patients regularly and enjoys getting feedback on South Shore’s menu.

“Being able to directly impact a person’s care and aid in their recovery gives you a sense of satisfaction and gratitude for the work that doctors and nurses must feel,” he noted. “When a patient leaves here and tells me that our food rivals a hotel or restaurant that they have eaten at, it gives me such pride knowing how far we have come from that stigma of hospital food being inedible and just downright nasty.”

Chef Sauer recently met two patients who had been in the hospital for four months. Knowing that anyone in the same place for that long — let alone the location being a hospital — would probably get bored of the menu, Chef Sauer treated both gentlemen to ordering off the hospital’s Café menu and requesting special meals.

“I made them chicken wings on football Sundays so they felt a little bit normal and on Valentine’s Day we made our lovely couple a nice surf and turf romantic dinner so they would be able to spend some time together,” Chef Sauer recalled. “One of the gentlemen’s girlfriends gave me a huge hug while she was crying because she was so happy that we were taking such personal care of her love.

It was very touching to experience that kind of emotion from a patient’s loved one for just doing what we do normally.”

This shows that comfort not only comes in a person’s medical care, creating an environment that is healing, but also in the food that can nourish a person’s soul.

“[Patients] are probably here after having possibly the worst day of their lives and it’s our goal to make them feel as comfortable as possible through the meals that are being prepared for them,” Chef Sauer said. “That’s why the term ‘comfort food’ is used here so lovingly; to make them have a sense of normalcy in an otherwise abnormal situation for them.”

Changing that perspective among the chefs and cooks took some effort. Chef Sauer heard some “that’s not how we do it” and “that’s not going to work here” when he began instituting new cooking techniques and fresher ingredients.

“Explaining the ingredients, how we were going to prepare them, how they were different from what we were using before, and how they were fresher and better for our patients played a significant role in getting the cooks onboard with our new food mission,” Chef Sauer explained. “I feel like the healthcare industry is going through a tremendous change in that food is having as much importance as medical care when it is discussed within board room meetings. The foods that we put in our bodies undoubtedly have an effect on the way we heal and respond to treatment, almost like putting high octane gas in your car for better performance.”

Chef Sauer is finding that the concept that food is medicine is becoming more ingrained in hospitals.

“If we continued to feed our patients unhealthy, processed, fried, fatty foods, then it would ultimately defeat the purpose of trying to improve health,” he said. “Food is medicine, the same as any pill or prescription.”

To be able to complete this hospital food transformation, Chef Sauer notes more quality chefs and cooks are needed to keep pushing the food as medicine message forward while increasing the food’s quality and nutritional value.

“The more I notice how many other hospitals are hiring quality executive chefs to lead their kitchens and reimagine the food choices, the more I understand that this will be the industry standard very shortly,” he said. “Hospital chef-manager jobs used to be very cushy and with little to no cooking experience required to manage a kitchen. That will no longer be the case in healthcare as people are more and more educated about the food they eat and where the ingredients are coming from… Now is a great time to join a growing and expanding job market that has infinite potential to make a difference in people’s lives.”