Serving with cleanliness at Nawaloka

Amalshan GUNERATHNE

The extravagant dishes tailored with artificial flavours might tilt and tickle your taste strings in many ways, but consume them on regular basis and before long you could end up being trapped on the sick bed for good. Hence the ideal way would be to consume nutritious, hygienic food that could pave the way for a better life.

Zest recently paid a visit to the Nawaloka Hospital kitchen to have a chat with Chef Alan Gerreyn and his kitchen brigade to discuss the challenges that they face when catering to the hospital patients.

Speaking of the challenges that the hospital kitchen staff are faced with, Alan noted, "Catering to a whole hospital full of patients is by no means an easy task. You have to be very specific about the dishes that you make. There are specific diets that you have to create for each patients".

However the greatest challenge for a hospital chef is to create healthy meals while keeping the taste factor alive. The general norm is that tasty, spicy foods are not good for your health. Still, the kitchen crew in Nawaloka Hospital has few tricks up their sleeves to tackle the issue. They know the means to make appetizing meals without using harmful artificial flavours or oil. "Obviously, there are times that we can't use oily stuff, but there are other means and we use substitutes to keep the taste factor alive. We use lots of herbs, spices and other oriental leaves to make the meal more appealing to the patient," Chef Alan expressed.

The kitchen crew at Nawaloka has reasons to feel proud of themselves, as they have recently been bestowed with the 'Five Crowns Award' for the excellence in maintaining the food hygiene. The five crowns status is awarded by the 'Crowns Food Hygiene' scheme. Crowns for Food Hygiene scheme has been developed based on international best practices to assist and encourage food businesses in Sri Lanka to follow good hygienic practices. Expressing his thoughts on the criteria that won them the award, Chef Alan elaborated, "The cleanliness and hygiene are the most important factors. There shouldn't be any Bacteria and they found our food samples to be excellent."

The kitchen in Nawaloka hospital underwent many changes after Chef Alan join the hospital in 2003. He is not an amateur to the culinary art. Before joining Nawaloka, he has worked in the hotel industry for twenty years. His previous experiences include esteemed hotels such as Galle Face Hotel and Galadari Meridian.

However, Chef Alan's challenge lied in shifting from a routine hotel kitchen to a hospital atmosphere. When queried about the challenge of adapting to the change, he noted, "It was very hard, at hotels you can create any kind of dish with using any ingredient. It allows you to express your culinary skills to the hilt. But hospital kitchen is something different. Here we have to follow certain standards and we have to stick within our limitations. You have to be very specific about the dishes that you create. There are different diets to each patient,"

Still, if the patient is not suffering from a severe sickness, they do serve them with routine meals. "We serve normal diets as well. At times, I go and talk with the patients to get their feedback and often it is very positive. We serve for everyone and, for little children we send white curries without chilies," Alan says.

The hospital kitchen is very much like Alan's second home now. He says he has no intention of returning to hotel industry again. He has high regard towards his profession and for his extremely dedicated staff. "Nawaloka kitchen is an integral part of my life now, I am enjoying my life and it is a great thing that we get to cater to the sick," he says.

Doctors at Nawaloka also have complete faith in the kitchen staff. "Sometimes doctors do recommend specific diets for special patients. But most of them have complete trust in me," Alan explained.