Top chefs join care home kitchens

Sunday 05 April 2020

Samphire's kitchen team has been redeployed in catering and domestic roles in local care homes after the top restaurant was forced to close due to the covid-19 outbreak.

Head Chef Tommy Radiguet (pictured top) has joined St Joseph’s Care Home on a secondment to assist in managing the kitchen, while the other ten members of his kitchen team are working across the five LV Care Group homes.

Tommy, who studied at Highlands College before starting his cooking career as an apprentice at Ormer under Shaun Rankin, will work at St. Joseph’s temporarily until Samphire is in a position to reopen. 

With the help of his kitchen team, Tommy will be designing new menus to roll out across the LV Care Group homes and expanding the current menu.

Pictured: Tommy and his team will be working on a new menu for the homes.

He will also be working with the existing Executive Head Chef to put together recipe folders, allergy lists and new spreadsheets that can be used across the homes o ensure smart, efficient and high-quality delivery of food service to the residents. 

“I am really pleased to have been offered this opportunity to continue working and will use my experience to assist the kitchen teams in streamlining their menus and enabling more variety, balance and nutritious options," Tommy said.

"I will also offer the team training by teaching them the basics of the new menus we will create, and ways to enable them to run more efficiently in the future. We hope to offer nutritional talks to the residents but will do so under the strict guidelines of social distancing.

"The safety and wellbeing of the residents is paramount, and we want to play our part in making their experience of lockdown in the home more enjoyable where we can.”

Pictured: Nick Bettany, the CEO of LV Care Group.

Nick Bettany, the CEO of LV Care Group, said they were delighted to welcome Tommy and "his extraordinary level of culinary expertise" to St Joseph’s, as well as members of his kitchen team whom he said will help ensure "the smooth running of our operations" over the coming months.

He added: "In the wake of such difficult times, particularly the economic impact on local businesses and workers, we are pleased we are able to offer the Samphire kitchen team temporary work and know their involvement will be instrumental in ensuring we continue to offer a very high standard of care to all of our residents during these challenging times.”