From Fine Dining to Bedside Trays: How Steven Beckta Helps Transform Food at The Ottawa Hospital
For a hospital whose breakfast offering was once described as a "yellow puck of sadness," the food as medicine approach represents a radical change. This transformation is being led by an unlikely figure: acclaimed restaurateur Steven Beckta, whose name has long been synonymous with fine dining in Canada's capital.
A Restaurateur's Unexpected Hospital Mission
For the past several years, Beckta has been working behind the scenes in the hard-working kitchens at The Ottawa Hospital. While his fine dining establishments have helped change how Ottawans think about food, his latest project takes him to a less glamorous but equally important arena: patient nutrition.
Beckta is a driving force behind the hospital's push to transform the food it serves to hundreds of patients every day. He has already helped create menus that replace highly processed food and added sugars with fresh, protein- and fibre-rich meals made from scratch. This trial is set to become the basis of institutional change in how the hospital feeds its patients.
From "Yellow Puck of Sadness" to Nutrient-Rich Meals
The patient food transformation project, which has been under discussion at The Ottawa Hospital for nearly a decade, began during a low point for food at the region's biggest hospital. Now, patients are being offered:
- Nutrient-rich bone broth (the same recipe Beckta serves at his eponymous restaurant)
- A chicken and baby kale Caesar salad
- Beckta's mother's shepherd's pie recipe — amped up with extra protein and vegetables
These are just some of the choices that have recently been offered to patients during trials, with more to come when the project eventually launches to all patients, starting at the General campus.
Personal Passion Meets Professional Expertise
Beckta, who was recently appointed Member of the Order of Canada, is passionate about his part-time hospital gig, calling it "one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had." He brings both professional expertise and personal motivation to the project.
"I always believed instinctually that food should be viewed as medicine," he said. "But, when my mother passed away from liver cancer 20 years ago, I was driven to understand more about what types of foods could impact health both positively and negatively."
Learning from International Best Practices
To inform this transformation, Beckta visited health organizations in the United States and Canada to examine their approaches toward feeding patients. The Ottawa Hospital adapted a fresh fruit smoothie recipe from Stanford Hospital in California and incorporated a bone broth recipe developed by a chef for the New York University hospital.
Beckta also visited a Stanford lab researching the relationship between Western-style diets, gut health and inflammation. However, he emphasizes that he learned the most from the dietetics team at The Ottawa Hospital, who played a large role in the project alongside Mike Lejeune, the hospital's director of clinical and support services.
Together, they are resetting the hospital's food service to emphasize that "food is medicine and should play an important role in the healing process." This represents a fundamental shift from institutional food service to therapeutic nutrition that supports patient recovery and well-being.
