Francesco Mazzei who owns several restaurants in London including Sartoria in Savile Row, Mayfair, has been cooking hundreds of meals and having them delivered to Mile End Hospital canteen.
The canteen is being used by staff members of the Barts Health Alliance.
Without regular evening diners at his restaurants through social distancing measures, Francesco volunteered his services the help NHS staff.
Francesco was set up with the HEROES charity; ‘to help them, help us’ which was founded by NHS workers to help NHS workers.
The charity had identified three main areas of focus where one of these areas was the delivery of food through existing infrastructure.
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.
On the meals, Francesco said:
“we’ve made everything fresh, the pasta made fresh, all the veg 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:
“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.”
