Celebrity chef revamping Tampa General Hospital’s menu, food service for patients

World-class dining for hospital patients

Celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian is partnering with Tampa General Hospital to revamp its menu and food delivery service for patients. Ariel Plasencia reports.

TAMPA, Fla. - Celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian is partnering with Tampa General Hospital to revamp its menu and food delivery service for patients.

"Basically, I'm going to take local food and cook it in the Mediterranean diet using what I use my entire career: No seed oils, no preservatives, nothing in a box," Zakarian told FOX 13. "Everything is local, fresh, just like it would come to my restaurants. It's basically a lot of menu items that I use already."

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The backstory:

The partnership between Zakarian and TGH all started over chicken noodle soup, according to the chef.

Zakarian told FOX 13 he was having a conversation with TGH CEO John Couris, who told the chef he wanted to find a way to improve the hospital’s chicken noodle soup. Not only did the Iron Chef know how the soup could be fixed, but he also had advice for the overall menu. 

"He said, 'I'd love to investigate this. Let's see what we can do.' And I said, ‘okay, are you serious?’ He said, ‘yes,’" Zakarian added. "And here we are."

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Local perspective:

From popular Food Network shows Chopped and The Kitchen, Zakarian began calling Tampa home several years ago. Now, he’s swapping out some of the hospital’s ingredients and upping the overall quality of the food. 

"So there’s oil, but it’s crappy oil – it's going [away]. There's salt: It’s crappy salt – it’s going [away]," Zakarian said. "So we're replacing a lot of the basic ingredients with better ingredients that aren't processed."

New menu options will soon include grilled Gulf snapper and steak frites. 

"We’re going to have things that are just perfect delicious food, but we know where they come from," Zakarian added. 

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Dig deeper:

These changes will have a minimal financial impact, too, the hospital maintains – all thanks to Zakarian’s help in trimming down the menu. Offering fewer menu items made with higher-quality ingredients will help cut down on overall waste, Donna Tope, Tampa General Hospital Davis Islands vice president of operations, said. 

"When Geoffrey came in and did a first look at our program and our process, he immediately said, 'Donna, you're offering way too many items,'" Tope said. "And so one, you are not doing any of them well, because you have so much you have to make. But then two, you have so much left over. That's money that we could take to elevate food."

Next week, the hospital plans to debut its new "room service" delivery model that Zakarian helped improve, too. 

Right now, set meals are delivered at set times, which doesn’t always work when patients are out of their rooms for tests and procedures. Under the new model, patients can order food "room service-style."

"We really want to flip that on its head and really let the patient have the power to choose their food when they want it and have it delivered when they're ready to eat," Tope added. "And so that's what this room service delivery model is going to empower our patients to do."

What's next:

While the new delivery service model is expected to launch August 5, the new food items aren’t expected to be available to patients until October.