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Going gourmet

The big gas grill roared to life under Chef Walt MacDuff’s touch, yellow flames licking toward the slab of London broil in his tongs. With a wicked sizzle, it settled next to two equally generous portions of beef, sending the aroma of garlic and spices into the spring air.

A burgundy demiglace was ready to drizzle the finished entrée, accompanied by oven-roasted potatoes and steamed fresh asparagus. For dessert? Ramekins of silky crème brulée waited for a final flame.

It was a simple menu, really, given MacDuff’s 30 years of high-end restaurant and corporate experience for clients such as AT&T and Walt Disney Co. But for patients, staff and guests of the Northern Idaho Advanced Care Hospital, the recent lunch was a far cry from institutional fare.

“There is no such thing as ‘hospital food,’ ” said MacDuff, 45, the former Disney chef who was hired to run the kitchen of the new rehabilitation center in Post Falls. “To me, food is food.”

That’s a philosophy shared by a growing number of experienced chefs who’ve traded the grueling pace of the retail restaurant world for what they say are the kinder hours and more appreciative clientele of nursing homes, hospitals and assisted-living centers.

“I think it’s kind of a trend,” said Gary Johnson, 53, who spent decades running his own restaurant and supervising food and beverages at the Silverwood Theme Park south of Athol. For the past year, he’s been the head chef at the Sullivan Park assisted-living center in Spokane. “Actually, this is really what I want to do.”

Chefs, cooks and food preparation workers held nearly 3.1 million jobs in 2004, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Labor. Of those, about 424,000 were institution and cafeteria cooks, and another 125,000 were chefs and head cooks.

It’s difficult to find firm statistics about chefs who’ve made the switch, but at one Northwest culinary school, more students are bypassing restaurants in favor of care centers, an official said. Between 3 percent and 5 percent of graduates from the Western Culinary Institute in Portland are landing jobs in institutional settings, said Joanne Lazo, the school’s marketing director.

“Some students are specifically requesting this opportunity,” said Lazo, whose school enrolls about 1,000 students at any one time. “The hours of operation tend to be more regular and the set of customers is fixed.

In the Inland Northwest, several experienced chefs have left restaurant work for care centers, where their skills are a marketing tool in an increasingly competitive environment.

“If you have the choice of going where there’s great food or OK food, it’s going to be an issue,” noted MacDuff.

That’s not news to Pamela Pierson, director of marketing for the Sullivan Park center in Spokane.

“Three of the most important times of the day are mealtimes,” she said. “They come down half an hour before the meal is ready to socialize. They all appreciate their meals. They all appreciate good food.”

That appreciation means the chefs have to work as hard as ever to please the palates of their customers. MacDuff’s menus change with the desires of his clients, who often include staff, guests and, more frequently, outsiders who come just for the meals.

Just ask Colleen Nelson, who was office leader at a nearby H&R Block outlet during busy tax season. She and her co-workers often went to Northern Idaho Advanced Care for lunch.

“Our favorite thing was, every other Thursday, they’d have a salad with a fillet of salmon on top of it,” she said. “It was not your typical hospital food.”

Like retail chefs, those who work in medical or care centers have to adapt to specialized tastes. A row of trays on MacDuff’s counter specified which patients couldn’t have sugar, and which received only liquids. All clients can benefit from reduced fat and low sodium, added Johnson.

“The biggest difference here is you’ve got a different audience. You don’t have a lot of upset people,” said Johnson, who meets with residents every week to discuss what dishes they like – and don’t.

Folks in care centers can be just as picky as restaurant clients, some said. Barbara Elliott Miller is a former actress now living at the Orchard Crest Retirement and Assisted Living Community in the Spokane Valley.

“We’re all used to certain particular things,” she said. “I’ve lived all over the country. I don’t like to cook, I’m not a good cook. But I did get used to things like a certain kind of vinaigrette dressing for my salad.”

The chef at her center does a good job of meeting clients’ tastes, Miller said.

“Oh, let’s see. There are several dishes that I like,” she said. “There’s the pork chops that he steams in apple juice. And coming back here to biscuits and gravy was like coming back to my childhood.”

Serving the clients is the first task, but the chefs are also glad to help themselves. Decades of 12-hour days and seven-day weeks take their toll, said MacDuff and Johnson.

“If I’m working in a restaurant, I’m working nights, I’m working weekends, I’m working holidays,” said MacDuff, the father of four boys ages 3, 13, and a pair of 9-year-old twins.

In fact, he left his job running the E-Ticket, a Disney dining and catering operation in Southern California, to pursue a more family-centered life in the Inland Northwest. His goal now is to make the Post Falls hospital’s kitchen profitable, mostly by attracting more staff and outsider diners to his table.

“We kind of felt like it was the right thing to do,” MacDuff said.