Chef Miriam Zamparelli and her team at The Mount Sinai Hospital make daily rounds and work closely with clinical staff to ensure that patients receive meals that are nutritious and enjoyable. “We cook with the purpose of making people smile, feel better, more empowered, and secure,” she says. “It is a pleasure to work side by side our nurses, doctors, and all of our departments to reach a common goal—taking great care of our patients.”
Chef Miriam and her staff learn about their patients’ diets and preferences. When Chef Miriam learned that a patient from Germany was eating only a few items during her several-week hospitalization, she created a homemade dish of spaetzle, German egg noodles, to accompany a meal of grilled salmon and vegetables.
On another occasion, Chef Miriam surprised a young patient (and her father) from the South with a special breakfast of grits, one of their regional favorites. The mother of one patient recently sent Chef Miriam a thank-you letter for making her daughter’s hospital stay more pleasant, and wrote that her daughter was “totally healed.” Chef Miriam says, “The reward is the satisfaction of knowing you are part of these thoughts and feelings. That’s indescribable and priceless.”