The Sunday Mail gets exclusive access into the new Royal Adelaide Hospital to taste the patient menu
TAKE a look at the Sunday Mail’s exclusive access of the patient food that’s going to be dished out at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.
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GOOD ol’ salt. For chefs, salt is the holy grail that makes food zing but in a hospital setting, large quantities of the stuff is an absolute no-no.
On top of that, hospital food often gets a pretty bad rap.
So, it must be a tough job, then, for the man who’s heading the new Royal Adelaide Hospital kitchen to get the right balance between tasty and nutritious food, and a menu that’s good for the soul.
“The food is going to be different from what you would get at cafe or a restaurant,” executive chef Russell Lloyd said.
“If a patient has a no-salt diet, it’s no salt — we have to adhere to that. We have to give the patient the right nutrition to get better.”
As the new RAH readies for its September 5 opening, the Sunday Mail was given an exclusive taste test of the patients’ menu during the week as well as access to its state-of-the-art kitchen that will serve up almost 4000 dishes every day.
“Go on, try it,” Mr Lloyd says to me, pointing at a warm beetroot and chocolate pudding on the kitchen bench.
The pudding is moist, not overly sweet and pretty tasty. It gets a tick from me.
That dessert, along with more than 80 meal options from Szechuan beef stir-fry to ricotta ravioli with spinach and peach cobbler, have been tried, tested and finessed over the past month to ensure the tastiest food ends up on the plate.
Mr Lloyd, 57, pictured above, who works for Spotless, which has the catering contract at the hospital, started from scratch when he created the menu.
“Every meal has to go through a strict process. We put the diet into a computer program and then the sodium, the fat — it all gets analysed and things then get eliminated if they’re not suitable,” he said.
There are a whopping 70 possible patient diet codes, including people with swallowing issues or those who require diets low in nutrients such as potassium, that all need to be accommodated for.
When the hospital opens, food will be cooked up to five days in advance and then kept in fridges before it is reheated and sent to patients with the aid of automated robots — known as RAHbots.
Central Adelaide Health Network dietitian Georgina Rassias, who is also helping tweak the menu, said the right food was crucial in helping patient recovery.
“While patients are in hospital, diet is a number one priority and will govern how quickly a patient recovers,” she said. “It addresses malnutrition and helps assist our patients leave the hospital in a timely manner.”
Ms Rassias welcomed patient feedback and said the menu would continue to be reviewed and changed.
Health Minister Jack Snelling, who has tried the menu, gave it his tick of approval.
“It’s very tasty and has great variety,” he said.
“To try and feed 800 patients and find something that everyone is happy with is even more difficult and I think they’ve done it.”