Celebrity Chef cooks meals for Barts Health staff
A celebrity chef from Italy has been cooking hundreds of meals and delivering them to Mile End Hospital canteen, a canteen being used by staff members across the Barts Health alliance.
The chef, Francesco Mazzei, is one of the great Italian chefs working in Britain today, and owns a number of restaurants in London including Sartoria in Savile Row, Mayfair.
Originally from Calabria, in south-west Italy, Francesco Mazzei has been cooking in the United Kingdom since the early-nineties, and his restaurants are part of ‘D&D London’, a luxury collection of independent restaurants operating in and around London.
With COVID-19 spreading throughout the United Kingdom and social distancing measures put in place, the restaurant and bar industry has temporarily ground to a halt leaving Francesco and his team unable to cook food for their regular evening diners.
Wanting to volunteer his services to help NHS staff dealing with the crisis, Francesco was set up with the HEROES Charity, a charity founded to deliver one mission at its heart; Help Them, Help Us. Founded by NHS workers to help NHS workers, the charity identified three key areas of focus, one of which was facilitating the delivery of food through existing infrastructure such as restaurants, commercial kitchens, and food service businesses.
Francesco and his team then partnered with Flavour Management, a boutique agency dedicated to celebrity chefs who had reached out to the HEROES charity and assigned the Italian chef to cook healthy meals and distribute them to Barts Health.
Talking as he prepared the meals, Francesco said, “we’ve made everything fresh, the pasta made fresh, all the vedge is fresh. We’re so proud to be helping the NHS with this, so it’s going to be good. We really hope the NHS staff enjoy.”
Associate director of culture change and wellbeing lead at Barts Health, Geraldine Cunningham, said she was delighted that staff members were being treated with such tasty, wholesome meals.
“Francesco and his team have already delivered 900 meals over the last week and is delivering another 150 each day this week which is absolutely fantastic. Colleagues are really enjoying them as they come in a refrigerated van, cold with heating instructions and ingredients listed.”
