Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
TAKING REQUESTS Pnina Peled, executive chef at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. More Photos » So Pnina Peled, the executive chef atMemorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, makes Julien his beloved shrimp scampi with Promise, a butter substitute, and eggplant Parmesan using egg whites, whole-wheat bread crumbs and soy cheese. When Julien told Ms. Peled about his love of pumpkin spice cake, she presented him one baked with egg whites and applesauce. After he rejected the hospital’s whole-wheat ravioli, she hauled her pasta maker on the subway from Brooklyn to roll out a handmade version. “She came in on her day off with a stack of cookbooks and sat with us to come up with a menu for him,” Julien’s mother, Jacqueline Collot, said the other day as her son relished whole-wheat spaghetti dressed with sesame oil and topped with green beans minced fine to look like scallions — Ms. Peled’s response to his stated craving for “unspicy spicy noodles.”
“What Pnina offers Julien is a combination of love of food and the freedom that was taken away for so long,” Ms. Collot added. “To see him interested in meals gives us great comfort.”
Ms. Peled, who came to Sloan-Kettering a year ago after working in some of the city’s finest restaurants and winning an episode of the popular Food Network show “Chopped,” is part of a revolution in hospital food. Bland broths, neon Jell-O and unidentifiable white-meat products are slowly becoming scarce. Instead, hospitals like the University of TexasMD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have extensive room-service-like menus and give patients the freedom to order meals whenever they are hungry, while the kitchen staff at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis is happy to duplicate recipes provided by parents. Sloan-Kettering patients, too, order meals from one of 75 room-service menus — kosher, halal, vegan, low-sodium, etc. But Ms. Peled said that when she started, she saw that patients who did not find anything appealing on the menu often would not eat at all, which motivated her to make the food service more flexible. She has a team of 35 chefs from diverse backgrounds catering to the special requests of patients, particularly the younger ones, who come to the renowned cancer center from around the globe. In recent months, one chef has been serving dal, curries and rotis to a 16-year-old patient from India; another has made yellow rice for a 3-year-old Latino boy who wanted the version like his mother’s; and a third devised a menu of low-microbial foods for an 8-year-old girl from Italy who wanted dishes that reminded her of home, like fish Francese (it has a lemon sauce). “There’s no substitute for a good diet, and appetizing food can make all the difference,” said Dr. Susan Prockop, a pediatric oncologist at Sloan-Kettering, noting that eating well can speed recovery and keep patients off intravenous nutrition.
Dominique Symonette, the registered dietitian in charge of pediatrics at the hospital, said that cancers, and chemotherapy, often result in mouth sores, nausea, vomiting and difficulty swallowing. Low-sodium, low-sugar and low-microbial diets — which limits raw and fresh food because of the risk of infection — are common for patients with compromised immune systems or those who are taking steroids or other medications long term. Enter Chef Peled or one of her three sous-chefs, who spend an hour each afternoon meeting with pediatric patients and their parents to discuss food preferences. (Adult patients at Sloan-Kettering can also make personalized requests, but as the mother of a 2-year-old, Ms. Peled, 37, has a soft spot for sick children.) Veronica McLymont, director of food and nutrition services at the hospital, says the customized approach has not increased costs because when the children get what they want, less food is wasted.
Ryan Brennan, 17, was not very hungry during his second inpatient stint at Sloan-Kettering for sarcoma in the fall. So Ms. Peled made a pu pu platter-style tray with small amounts of items he enjoyed, like buffalo wings and vegetable skewers. “The meals stimulated my appetite,” Ryan said, “and I could push myself to eat because they tasted so good.”
Valerie Ramo said she was convinced that Ms. Peled was crucial to the recovery of her daughter, Joely, from a bone-marrow transplant in July. Doctors had warned that Joely, who was 8 and had spent two months at Sloan-Kettering being treated for severe aplasticanemia, would most likely be fed through a tube after the surgery. Instead, Ms. Peled fulfilled Joely’s wishes for pressed turkey and cheese sandwiches similar to the ones sold at Dunkin’ Donuts, a combination of strawberry daiquiri and piña colada mixers, and “takeout” pizza delivered to her hospital room in a pizza box. “I think she ended up not needing it because of Pnina’s food,” Ms. Ramo said, referring to the intravenous nourishment. Joely said, “I can still eat what I love, and that makes me feel better and special.”
Now an outpatient, Joely says she looks forward to her doctor’s appointments several times a week because she can eat lunch at the hospital.
As soon as her health is more stable, she will return home to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “I can’t wait to go home so I am with my dad and brothers again and I can see the roses on our front yard,” she said, “but I am going to miss Pnina’s cooking.”
Ms. Peled, who was born in Israel, grew up in Brooklyn helping out at her father’s doughnut shop and his two Israeli restaurants. After culinary school, she worked at restaurants including Becco and Eleven Madison Park, then became executive chef at Jolly Hotel Madison Towers (overseeing its Cinque Terre restaurant, among others). She switched to the hospital, she said, in hopes of making a bigger impact with cooking: “I didn’t feel like I was doing service to society by being a restaurant chef,” she said. At Sloan-Kettering, Ms. Peled’s small office is filled with thank-you cards and pictures from patients, and as she walks through the pediatric ward, she is showered with compliments from children and their parents.
“Food is about bringing people together and making them happy,” she said. “I might not have realized this when I started my career, but to do that for people who have cancer is the reason I became a chef.”
