Haute Cuisine @ LRGH

Beginning next month, Lakes Region General Hospital will replace its seven-day cycle menu with "At Your Service," a room service program that will enable patients to select their breakfast, lunch and dinner from a extensive menu, have their meal cooked to order and delivered to their room within 45 minutes.

The Food and Nutrition Services Department unveiled the program at the hospital cafeteria yesterday, much to the delight of clinical staff, who got their first and last taste of offerings that will ultimately be prepared exclusively for patients. The menu offered a selection of soups and salads along with grilled Atlantic salmon topped with a cranberry marmalade, seared beef tips with sauteed mushrooms in a burgundy sauce, both served with Jasmine rice, accompanied by carrots and green beans. A decorated cake topped off the meal to celebrate the debut of the new service.

Marketing Director Natalie Rudzinskyj said that the program provides patients with greater control over when and what they eat, which increases the likelihood they will get the nutrition they require and reduces the amount of food that goes to waste.

"The trays come back empty," said executive chef Mark Dyball of Room Service Technologies, headquartered in Hollywood, California, who has overseen the introduction of the program, designed the menu and trained the cooks. "The patients eat and that helps the healing process," he said. "All the food is fresh. Nothing is canned or frozen and all the sauces will be made from scratch."

Dyball, who served as executive chef at the UCLA Medical Center for 11 years before starting his business, said that the staff at LRGH "are all very good cooks and learned very quickly. They will do a good job." Drawing on his experience with other hospitals, he said that perhaps the only drawback of the program is that patients, who are normally discharged in the morning, are more likely to insist on staying for lunch.

Patients can order breakfast anytime between 7 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. and lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Once they have placed their order, their meal is cooked and delivered by an "ambassador." Patients whose physicians have specified particular diets will be informed of any inappropriate items on the menu and helped to make appropriate choices. Ambassadors will provide any assistance patients may require. Guests wishing to dine with patients may also order from the room service menu for a fee.