The LIJ Valley Stream team is most excited about showcasing their talents. Executive Chef Patty Sobel says, “I really want to showcase how improved my team at Orzac Rehab and LIJ Valley Stream Hospital has become. I have worked with this team for 18 months and they are rising with culinary skills like the mighty phoenix!”

The North Shore University Hospital team is most excited about getting to showcase the culinary abilities they learned in previous culinary experiences and apply them to a healthcare setting.

The Lenox Hill Hospital team is excited to collaborate and create dishes that are appetizing, appealing, and healthy enough to fit the Northwell Healthy Choice criteria! These are challenges we come across every day so we continuously educate and put into practice strategies for adjusting diets to be nutritious and enjoyable. This competition gives us an opportunity to think outside of the box and prepare meals that will leave patients feeling healthy and satisfied.

The Lenox Hill Hospital team is excited to collaborate and create dishes that are appetizing, appealing, and healthy enough to fit the Northwell Healthy Choice criteria! These are challenges we come across every day so we continuously educate and put into practice strategies for adjusting diets to be nutritious and enjoyable. This competition gives us an opportunity to think outside of the box and prepare meals that will leave patients feeling healthy and satisfied.

Michael Ufholz had many years of experience as a chef in the restaurant industry before joining our culinary team at Northwell Health in 2019. Today, as the executive sous chef at Peconic Bay Medical Center (PBMC) in Riverhead, New York, he takes pride helping to heal our patients in a different way—with food and nutrition.

When you think of hospitals, nutritious and restaurant-quality food may not be top of mind, but at Northwell, preparing delicious and healthy dishes for our patients is one of our highest priorities. At Northwell, we believe innovation is the key ingredient in promoting wellness and is essential to transforming the healthcare culinary experience for our patients and our team members.

Michael is proud of the work he does and the team he has built at PBMC. With a sense of devotion and passion in all that he does, Michael knows that creating a positive impact on each patient’s food experience is vital to his success. It is the positive impact on his patients and having the ability to improve their experience that led Michael to want to work for Northwell Health.

“If you’re ready to make meals from the heart, this is your place to be,” said Michael. “Food tastes better when it’s made from the heart, and that’s what Northwell’s culinary teams do.”

It all begins with the culinary team in the kitchen each day. Michael’s daily responsibilities include selecting the daily menu for our patients and providing training to our team members, such as teaching cooking techniques. Michael also assists in the management of the cafeteria and catering functions, in addition to preparing all food items appropriate for each meal including starters, entrees, side dishes and more.

Michael believes that making a good quality meal for patients is the most rewarding part of his job. For instance, if a patient is worried about an upcoming test or procedure, a meal prepared by Michael and Northwell’s culinary team can make them feel calmer and more at ease.

“I’m able to see firsthand the impact our culinary team has on our patients,” said Michael. “Our teams work hard to produce the best meals for our patients, and it truly pays off by making our patients happy.”

Michael loves that his current position with Northwell allows him to have a healthy work/life balance. When working in the restaurant industry, it was common for Michael to be at the restaurant into the late hours multiple days a week. Now at Northwell, Michael’s team works just as hard but with flexible shifts to ensure they have time to balance a full-time career with their families at home. This makes a huge difference in his life as he shares, “I used to feel like I lived at work and now I live to truly experience life.” With a flexible schedule, Michael believes Northwell has allowed him to have the opportunity to get even more crafty with his cooking — being creative with recipes that he could possibly add to PBMC’s menu.

Michael feels supported to grow and develop at Northwell. He also welcomes the camaraderie with his fellow culinary teams at our other hospitals with Northwell’s annual chef challenge competition, where each hospital’s culinary team competes to create a three-course-meal for a panel of judges.

These unique, team-focused opportunities provide Michael with learned disciplines, which help him be a better chef. He loves that his work environment at Northwell is more collaborative than any other work environment he’s ever been a part of before.

Discover a career well cared for and learn more about hospitality careers.

At Northwell, we stand behind the belief that food is medicine and a little competition can spark culinary innovation. At this year’s annual Chefs Challenge event, hosted at Glen Cove Hospital, our culinary teams competed for the chance to create a healthy, delicious meal that may be prepared for future patients at Northwell hospitals across our organization.

Each team, comprised of our chefs, cooks, and registered dieticians, had 90 minutes to present a healthy and enticing three-course meal to the judges. In its 11th year, Northwell had the honor of hosting best-selling cookbook author and Emmy-award winning TV host, Lidia Bastianich, as one of our celebrity guest judges.

“First, I’m amazed at the quality of food that’s being tasted here. Secondly, that this food is being served to patients in Northwell hospitals in big numbers,”* Lidia Bastianich said.

The first prize was awarded to the team from Peconic Bay Medical Center, whose winning dishes included: a chilled English pea soup with goat cheese panna cotta for an appetizer, a deconstructed seafood stew as the main entrée, and a raspberry yogurt mousse for dessert. Coming in second place was Syosset Hospital and in third place was Northern Westchester Hospital.

Bruno Tiso, vice president of Northwell’s food services and corporate executive chef, shared, “This annual event is where we confirm our commitment to redefining food in healthcare. Not only does it allow us to get together to share ideas, new techniques, and new dishes, it also allows us to showcase how we are transforming hospital food.”*

When you think of hospitals, restaurant-quality, nutritious food may not be top of mind, but at Northwell, preparing delicious and healthy dishes for our patients is a priority. From cooks to chefs to dining assistants, we have many career opportunities that offer comprehensive benefits and growth.

Join our award-winning culinary team.

Northern Westchester Hospital (NWH) is now home to 35 garden beds that hold organically grown vegetables. Started in June 2020, the garden was created to be a therapeutic space where employees could unwind during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The idea came from Rebecca Martin, committee member and the senior director of food and dining services at NWH and Phelps Hospital. Rebecca presented the project to the Wellness Resilience and Recognition Committee that Richard Mellor, associate executive director of Human Resources, put together during COVID to support our hospital team members. The project was met with positive remarks from senior leadership, and the planning process was set to begin.

Local Eagle Scout Zachary Couzens, whose parents had been COVID patients at NWH, felt compelled to somehow give back to the hospital that took the best care of his parents during such a worrying time. While in search of an Eagle Scout project, Zachary decided to collaborate with the Wellness, Recognition and Resilience Committee and other employees at NWH to create the wellness garden, donated by the Patient Centered Innovation Fund.

Bryan Tompkins, an environmental services team member at NWH, worked to create the vision of the wellness garden. Then Zachary, along with NWH culinary and food service employee volunteers and the committee, built the framework of each garden bed, filled each bed with a compost and soil mix, and planted the vegetables. “It was all really a team effort,” says Rebecca Martin. “It was also nice seeing Zachary’s parents in such great health helping create the beds with the other volunteers.”

All foods grown in the garden are donated to patients leaving the hospital who are food insecure or vulnerable. The garden contributes to healthy, nutritious meals for patients and advances their culinary experience with farm-to-table cooking that enables our culinary staff to deliver delicious meals.

Managed by 35 volunteer hospital staff members, the garden also provides a serene setting for employees and patients and families alike when a calming environment is needed. Although the garden is new and will be completing its first harvest this week, it has already proven to revitalize the spirit of the food and dining team members at NWH.

“We are a team that cares about each other and cares about our patients,” says Rebecca. “This is a team that takes incredible pride in what they do. They work so well together, and they are always there for each other.”

Become a Health Raiser and join our culinary and food services team

At Northwell Health we have an amazing team of registered dietitians (RDs) across the organization who provide both essential and exceptional care to our patients. March 10th is Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day and we are proud to recognize the work of our RDs and their commitment to helping our patients lead healthy lives.

Here are four ways our RDs are making a difference for our patients and community:

An important part of a registered dietitian’s role is to partner with physicians and health care professionals to coordinate medical and dietary needs specialized exclusively for their patients.

“A part of my role consists of collaborating with physicians and other members of the health care team to address nutritional concerns and provide diet recommendations that will best serve the patient.” – Amanda Sinobio, registered dietitian, Plainview Hospital

Registered dietitians provide nutrition information to their patients. They help their patients focus on lifestyle changes, meet their health goals, or help them understand their disease better.

“As part of my role I help to plan, supervise, and coordinate team members on all pertinent patient and nutritional concerns.” – Colleen M. Chiariello, manager, nutrition and dietetics, Syosset Hospital

Every patient is unique with different bodies, goals and tastes. Our RDs help tailor a healthy eating plan that is special for all our patients. They discuss with the executive chef of that site possible menu options and how to adjust these recipes as needed. Some of our sites use a food service program to implement an individual patient’s requests, taking into consideration their therapeutic diet, food allergies and preferences. Not only does this help support their nutritional needs so they recover faster but it also comforts the patient to have foods they enjoy during their hospital stay.

“When I speak with a patient/family, I always obtain patient food preferences and try to help with their food service experience as best as I can.” – Rachel Blumberg, registered dietitian, Cohen Children’s Medical Center

Our RDs use their expertise and knowledge to help their patients understand how they can create lifestyle changes by explaining to them their nutrition assessment. The nutrition assessment consists of obtaining a patient’s diet, review of medical history, assessing nutrient needs and review of related laboratory values/medication. They not only help their patients live a healthy life but also a happier life!

“My favorite things about working as a RD is knowing I am promoting the health and wellbeing of our patients. I find it fulfilling to work in a teaching hospital where possibilities for learning are endless and hope to bring awareness to all regarding the value of nutrition and the pivotal role RDs play.” – Geralyn LaVecchia, registered dietitian, Long Island Jewish Medical Center

Lead a healthy career as a Registered Dietitian at Northwell Health. Apply today!

Five Northwell Health hospitals recently competed in the 2020 Chefs Challenge at Glen Cove Hospital! Chefs, cooks and one certified dietitian worked together to prepare a healthy and delicious three course meal within 90 minutes. After presenting their wild sea bass appetizer, Long Island duck entrée, and strawberry dessert to our judges for tasting, Phelps Hospital was awarded first place in the competition. The Northern Westchester Hospital team came in second while the Huntington Hospital team placed third.

You’ve already met this year’s teams, now take a look at their delicious meals!

In 2019, we received the 2019 Press Ganey “Quality of Food” award and sustained being number one in the system through hard work and dedication. We’ve also created a new patient menu to be executed later this year.

The most exciting thing that we have done this year is change the patient menu with seasonal offerings. Seasonal menus for our patients will not only introduce new choices for our guests but will offer fresh seasonal and healthier choices.

The launch of our Marra Forni Pizza kitchen.

The most exciting thing is the changing of the menus according to season. This has never been seen before in a hospital. We have also enhanced our cafeteria menu so our fellow colleagues and visiting guests get to experience exciting offerings in the cafeteria to purchase.

Our culinary team was very excited this year to roll out our new Spring/Summer menu on June 29. We tried to take advantage of seasonal vegetables, while preparing them in different and unique ways for our patients. Using the season’s bounty to your advantage can allow you to create wonderful classics such as our caprese salad with local heirloom, vine ripened tomatoes, as well as fresh asparagus for our new grilled asparagus-beet salad. Hospital patients usually could never tell what was going on outside their room’s window, so with our seasonal menu we tried to bring a little taste of the summer season inside and onto their plates.

We are returning with our core team from last year so that gives us an advantage for having experience within the competition. We also have been practicing very diligently and have become tighter as a unit because of it. All of the teams competing are strong candidates to win, but we think we have the right mix of talent, fortitude, energy and desire to bring home the win to Southside Hospital this year.

Barbecue season is here and our Northwell Health chefs have prepared the perfect dish to wow guests at your next event! Learn how to prepare a Spring Duck Salad that’s as healthy as it is delicious.