Guest Chef SpeedScratc

hef Stephen Bello, executive chef at South Nassau Communities Hospital on Long Island, NY, is certainly a talented culinarian. He has received a slew of honors, from the 2007 Chef Professionalism Award and the National Presidential Medallion, both from the American Culinary Federation (ACF), to the Gold Medal at the Les Amis d'Escoffier Society 2007 Culinary Exhibition in Cologne, Germany. He is also an inductee of both the Chef de Cuisine Society of New York and the ACF.

And he's a poet (see below).

Bello was hired as the first executive chef in South Nassau's history almost 20 years ago. Today, he oversees the 105-person Sodexo operation at the 441-bed hospital that provides patient dining, retail foodservice and onsite catering.

The patient dining operation is a hybrid room service model developed by Bello that has a restaurant-style menu with over 25 selections. Associates take orders three times a day, and patients can also call down their requests, which are all prepared to order.