As a foodservice company, Thomas Cuisine serves a variety of sectors, including healthcare. Because hospital food has a stigma, Thomas Cuisine and the culinary teams for each hospital have taken it upon themselves to flip the script.
To explore how Thomas Cuisine transforms healthcare food, we interviewed Sous-chef Andy Nguyen. Andy serves our client PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, where we provide high-quality patient dining services, as well as café services for guests and caregivers. In our interview, we dive into Andy’s personal experience with food insecurity, his determination to change the perception of hospital food, and his entry for the Healthcare Without Harm Culinary Competition that Thomas Cuisine has historically been recognized in.
When asked about the experience of changing healthcare food, Andy shares, “Any time you refer to hospitals, the last thing you think of is food. When I bring up hospital food, people have a poor opinion. But that’s not like what we do here. We push the bar a lot… We’re doing a complete overhaul of our patient service menu right now. And I’m really excited to share with everyone once we’re done with it because it does not look like hospital food.”
At PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, Andy and the Thomas Cuisine team do specials and fresh meals of the day, including Pho Fridays. Andy explains that in a high-stress setting for caregivers and patients alike, looking forward to their lunches and the specials versus dreading the food makes a difference.
For Andy, Pho is also the start of his passion and love for cooking. In his early years, instead of watching children’s shows, he watched chefs on television. By the age of 16, Andy began his culinary career in the Pacific Northwest. Through his Vietnamese parents who immigrated here in the 70s, he straddled the world of first-generation American citizenship with a palate trained to admire traditional Vietnamese food like Pho.
As his culinary skills advanced, Andy worked in high-end dining and competed in culinary competitions. After one cold night in Seattle 2010, he began a pop-up kitchen concept called “Feed The Need” to help those impacted by food insecurity during times of need, crisis, and natural disasters.
Andy’s previous passion for blessing others lives with food has culminated with his current position with Thomas Cuisine. He says, “Cooking for patients, you have a sense you’re saving their life in a way. You’re also feeding caregivers, doctors, and nurses that are working 18 hours a day to save lives, and they need nutrients to save lives… The [Thomas Cuisine] mission, the REAL food movement, and the things that people don’t necessarily associate with hospital food, we get to shine every day and do some amazing things. That means a lot right now because it’s more than just cooking.”
To tune into the full interview, view the video below.
