at the Gustave-Roussy Institute, meals prepared by a starred chef for children with cancer

Twice a month, young patients at the anti-cancer institute can enjoy “fancy” meals that revive their appetite, often lost due to their illness.

Who said you eat poorly in the hospital? To brighten up the hospitalization of children and adolescents, a starred chef now comes to the Gustave-Roussy anti-cancer institute in Villejuif, in the Paris region, twice a month. Aware that nutrition is an important issue in care, the chef offers menus that young patients want.

On the lunch menu for the 40 hospitalized children, it is “Sunday chicken with fingerling potatoes”, indicates the chef of the starred restaurant Chiberta in Paris. Irwin Durand has voluntarily developed several low-cost menus with and for children: “The only thing we were asked was that it makes them want to eat and that they be happy to eat.”

In her room, Emma, ​​13, is already eyeing dessert: “A chocolate cookie, it’s beautiful, it’s good, it looks very sweet, the chocolate looks melting“, she salivates. She is a regular at meals at the hospital, confirms her mother Allyson: “She ate better than in the first hospital she was admitted to.” “We were served like that, takes back his daughter, but sometimes there was no salt, there was no color, there was nothing… It was sad.”

“Crazy” meals with a stronger taste

Burger, kebab, or even breaded fish with gribiche sauce, and for dessert: Paris-Brest, chocolate mousse or madeleine, created by pastry chef Tessa Ponzo. “We put ourselves in the children’s place, she says, What will make them happy? And it’s true that the Paris-Brest cabbage, during the workshops, was very popular. The cream is creamy, it’s delicious, it’s praline, it’s hazelnuts, it works.”agrees the pastry chef.

The cooks at the Gustave-Roussy anti-cancer institute reproduce these menus two Wednesdays a month, so-called “tok” menus. They are stronger in taste, spicier than usual because treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, alter the taste of patients. Making young patients want to eat is essential, explains Doctor Christelle Dufour, head of the department: “There are children who cannot even smell the smell of the meal arriving and who will hide in their room, who want to lock themselves away, because this smell will trigger nausea. They have a loss of appetite which means that there are some who don’t eat at all. And the aspect that calls for gluttony can also make you want to eat again. And that’s also why ‘crazy meals’ work.”she says.

The Princess Margot association behind these “Toqués meals” plans to organize them more often, and also offer them to adults.