Care home chef who once cooked for the Queen enables residents to travel the world through food

A chef at Gracewell Healthcare, who has worked for a number of 5 star hotel restaurants including the Dorchester and cooked for the Queen, Nelson Mandela and Tom Cruise, now spends his time helping residents travel the world through the food they eat.

Darwin Serrano, who is head of hospitality at Gracewell of Church Crookham, learnt to be a chef at the age of 17 in the Philippines.

“I applied to work in my cousin’s hotel in the Philippines as a room boy, but they hired me as a kitchen helper instead. While I worked there, I developed my love for cooking. I would finish my chores and then ask the head chef to teach me to cook and after three months I was promoted to chef.

“After I was promoted, I thought to myself ‘I want to learn everything about being a chef’ so I moved to a three-star hotel after six months to build my knowledge. Once I had learnt what I could from there, I moved on to a four-star hotel in Manila to continue building experience. After two years in Manila I went back to the three-star hotel working as the head chef," he says.

Mr Serrano worked in 5 star hotels in the Philippines for more than five years as an executive sous chef.

After moving to Britain, he worked at a number of hotels including the Dorchester in Mayfair, London. “I started my journey at the Dorchester in the room service team before being moved to the main kitchen and working for six years as a sous chef. I later moved to plated banqueting where I managed a team catering for an average of over two thousand people a day. While doing this role I cooked for the Queen, Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and many other royalty from around the world."

After leaving the Dorchester Hotel, he worked at the Royal Surrey County Hospital for nine years. “However, it started feeling like I was doing the same thing every day so I put my name online to see if I could find any new opportunities. I started getting calls from care homes with one of them being Racquel who was the general manager of Gracewell of Camberley. She completely sold me the role that they were hiring for and I started at Gracewell not long after,” he reveals.

The thing he most enjoys about working as a chef in a care home, is “I love when people enjoy my food and I love getting to know the residents. It’s true that life doesn’t stop when you move into a care home so the team are committed to giving residents the best quality of life possible.

“I also love cooking dishes from all over the world and giving residents the opportunity to travel the world through their food. Some of the residents can’t get out into the community so it is important we bring the community to them.

“Before COVID-19, we loved throwing functions where they can invite their friends and family and also local schools, entertainers to celebrate with them.”

His main goal is to ensure the residents have a “balanced nutrition, we aim to give the maximum nutrition to all of our residents by having dietary meetings with the residents every week to find out what they enjoy eating, every food recipe is sent to our head of nutrition and hydration to create a balanced diet,” he says.

Gracewell of Church Crookham has recently launched an event called ‘The Captain’s Table’ which takes place on the first Wednesday of every month.

Mr Serrano says: “We asked all the residents, if they could go on a cruise, where they would like to go around the world. Then at the event, we put on a banquet of food from each of the locations that residents have chosen. All residents who have a birthday on that month are invited to dine with our general manager in our private dining facility, ‘The Captain’s Table’."

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