Ms. Alison Negrin

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  chefscollaborative.org/5y/x-3c-1u-5z/ - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/3/2008    Last Visited: 8/3/2008  

  CC member Alison Negrin was recently recognized for her work at the John Muir Health Center in Concord, California in an article called "Not Your Mother's Hospital Cooking".A former chef at Chez Panisse, Negrin is bringing sustainable food to California patients.

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  www.johnmuirhealth.com/index.php/news_article/newsID/39 - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 7/12/2009  

  Oakland A's players cook roasted vegetable quesadillas under the direction of John Muir Health Corporate Chef Alison Negrin.

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  www.eastbayexpress.com/news/really_slow_food/Content?oi - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 6/17/2008  

  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  ...
  Alison Negrin wanted to change the soup.And she succeeded.It took her three years.
  ...
  Negrin is quick to admit the whole thing sounds crazy.A whopping 36 months to usher the simplest of soups, a recipe of half a dozen ingredients, from the lightbulb inside her head to the hard drive in the dieticians' office , where it would be analyzed, edited, and tweaked ad infinitum , and then at long last get printed out, sheathed in plastic, and filed in a spiral-ring binder that sits on a stainless-steel shelf in this crowded industrial kitchen.
  
  For Negrin, it was nonetheless a triumph, and so what if many people she meets just don't get it."When you're out in the world and people say, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'I'm the chef at John Muir,' they go, 'Oh, god, I was a patient there,'" she says.But Negrin's five years as a hospital chef have been in service of a mission: to change the profile of hospital food from bland, starchy, and processed to something reasonably close to actual, healthy food.Oh, and to help save the world in the process.
  
  Long ago in another life, in a restaurant kitchen designed especially for her, Negrin could change the soup whenever she liked based on a whim, some herb she'd picked up in Chinatown, or perhaps a cookbook that made her itch with curiosity.That was long before the John Muir gig, back when she was one of the Bay Area's chefs to watch.One whom the San Francisco Chronicle would write about in that breathless style food critics reserve for an electric new talent.
  
  On this fall evening, Negrin, now 54, lifts a lid to examine halibut baked over thinly sliced fennel.She walks next to the slow-moving conveyor belt that hospitals call the tray line, where each of half a dozen workers places a single item on the teal trays, looking more like factory workers than restaurant cooks.She tastes a broccoli floret."This is supposed to have the flavoring reduction on it," she protests to no one in particular.
  
  Negrin has a presence that transcends her five-foot height.She's dressed in a chef's jacket with black trim, a note of edgy in a kitchen humming with pale fluorescent lighting.She has wide, Mediterranean features (her father is Greek and Jewish), and eyes so large they look Coptic.She wears dangling silver craft-fair earrings, and sports a bob with fashionably streaky highlights.Artsy, even in middle age.
  
  It was art that got Negrin hooked on food in the first place.After college, she had a degree in sculpture and no clue what to do with her life.Cooking school was her lesser of evils, except that she hated the structure and the old-school European chefs at San Francisco's California Culinary Academy.Ellen McCarty, who was one year behind her at the culinary academy, recalls that Negrin had an intimidating vibe.
  ...
  In 1988, Negrin was working the upstairs cafe line there when she got a call from a headhunter.The recruiter offered Negrin the title of executive chef in a restaurant that didn't yet exist, in a town she'd never heard of.It intrigued her, so Negrin leaped.
  ...
  For starters, Sugitani flew everyone to Japan , Negrin, the restaurant's general manager, even the architect.
  ...
  Negrin was in epiphany land.A year later in Danville, she was the one inspiring the epiphanies.The Chronicle's food critic deemed Bridges the kind of restaurant you'd find in Paris or New York.
  
  But after years of success at Bridges and Ginger Island, a high-profile fusion bistro on Berkeley's Fourth Street, Negrin's inner art student began to question whether she wanted to be a fine-dining chef.After birthing a couple of restaurants, Negrin wanted to give birth to a kid , except that she couldn't, so she adopted.Nurturing her baby son gave Negrin the urge to go on nurturing.She taught the ABCs of cooking to inner-city kids, did yoga at a meditation center above the fog line in West Marin, and studied at a New Age nutrition institute whose slogan was "healing from the ground up."Negrin steeped herself in Ayurveda, Chinese cures, and herbal remedy home brews the way she'd once steeped herself in beurre blanc and demiglace.
  
  Negrin heard about the John Muir job from a neighbor.During the interview process, Sandi Rigney, the hospital's nutrition services director, said she'd want Negrin to make some improvements.
  ...
  Negrin, who'd taken blind leaps before, said yes.
  
  She didn't know then just how blind this one would prove to be.As Bridges executive chef, Negrin harvested kaffir lime leaves from a garden planted just for her.
  ...
  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  ...
  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.

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  food-management.com/business_feature/fm_imp_3353/ - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 6/29/2009  

  For Alison Negrin, Executive Chef at John Muir/Mt. Diablo Healthy System in Concord, Calif., buffets represent the perfect solution to event foodservice.
  
  "Buffets are easier than sit-down functions with table service," she notes.
  ...
  Food looks better when offset by a background of ceramic versus metal. (Negrin)
  ...
  YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO COVER cooked items with plastic film when keeping them in the warmer; it tends to steam food that might have been seared or roasted, altering their texture. (Negrin)
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  A bit of frozen glacÈ product (packaged in brick form) for a rich, intense beef or chicken flavor. (Negrin)
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  INCLUDING ROOM TEMPERATURE FOODS (grilled vegetables, pasta and grain salads made with vinaigrettes) helps you get away from using chafing dishes, permitting more attractive ceramic platters for serving food. (Negrin)
  
  SERVE ENTREES ON A BED of some contrasting vegetable, such as sautÈed onions, leeks or spinach; this helps keep them moist. (Negrin)
  ...
  GARNISH WITH FRESH HERBS at the last minute; greens will wilt and turn brown in warmers and under chafer lids. (Negrin)
  
  TRY GARNISHING WITH HYDROPONIC WATERCRESS; it's very spring-like and eliminates stems . (Negrin)
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  HAVE ALL ORDERING DONE by e-mail. (Negrin)
  ...
  It's a good way to control portion sizes and take care of the customer. (Negrin)

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  www.eastbayexpress.com/2007-02-21/news/really-slow-food - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/21/2007    Last Visited: 3/9/2007  

  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  ...
  Alison Negrin wanted to change the soup.And she succeeded.It took her three years.
  ...
  Negrin is quick to admit the whole thing sounds crazy.A whopping 36 months to usher the simplest of soups, a recipe of half a dozen ingredients, from the lightbulb inside her head to the hard drive in the dieticians' office , where it would be analyzed, edited, and tweaked ad infinitum , and then at long last get printed out, sheathed in plastic, and filed in a spiral-ring binder that sits on a stainless-steel shelf in this crowded industrial kitchen.
  
  For Negrin, it was nonetheless a triumph, and so what if many people she meets just don't get it."When you're out in the world and people say, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'I'm the chef at John Muir,' they go, 'Oh, god, I was a patient there,'" she says.But Negrin's five years as a hospital chef have been in service of a mission: to change the profile of hospital food from bland, starchy, and processed to something reasonably close to actual, healthy food.Oh, and to help save the world in the process.
  
  Long ago in another life, in a restaurant kitchen designed especially for her, Negrin could change the soup whenever she liked based on a whim, some herb she'd picked up in Chinatown, or perhaps a cookbook that made her itch with curiosity.That was long before the John Muir gig, back when she was one of the Bay Area's chefs to watch.One whom the San Francisco Chronicle would write about in that breathless style food critics reserve for an electric new talent.
  
  On this fall evening, Negrin, now 54, lifts a lid to examine halibut baked over thinly sliced fennel.She walks next to the slow-moving conveyor belt that hospitals call the tray line, where each of half a dozen workers places a single item on the teal trays, looking more like factory workers than restaurant cooks.She tastes a broccoli floret."This is supposed to have the flavoring reduction on it," she protests to no one in particular.
  
  Negrin has a presence that transcends her five-foot height.She's dressed in a chef's jacket with black trim, a note of edgy in a kitchen humming with pale fluorescent lighting.She has wide, Mediterranean features (her father is Greek and Jewish), and eyes so large they look Coptic.She wears dangling silver craft-fair earrings, and sports a bob with fashionably streaky highlights.Artsy, even in middle age.
  
  It was art that got Negrin hooked on food in the first place.After college, she had a degree in sculpture and no clue what to do with her life.Cooking school was her lesser of evils, except that she hated the structure and the old-school European chefs at San Francisco's California Culinary Academy.Ellen McCarty, who was one year behind her at the culinary academy, recalls that Negrin had an intimidating vibe.
  ...
  In 1988, Negrin was working the upstairs cafe line there when she got a call from a headhunter.The recruiter offered Negrin the title of executive chef in a restaurant that didn't yet exist, in a town she'd never heard of.It intrigued her, so Negrin leaped.
  ...
  For starters, Sugitani flew everyone to Japan , Negrin, the restaurant's general manager, even the architect.
  ...
  Negrin was in epiphany land.A year later in Danville, she was the one inspiring the epiphanies.The Chronicle's food critic deemed Bridges the kind of restaurant you'd find in Paris or New York.
  
  But after years of success at Bridges and Ginger Island, a high-profile fusion bistro on Berkeley's Fourth Street, Negrin's inner art student began to question whether she wanted to be a fine-dining chef.After birthing a couple of restaurants, Negrin wanted to give birth to a kid , except that she couldn't, so she adopted.Nurturing her baby son gave Negrin the urge to go on nurturing.She taught the ABCs of cooking to inner-city kids, did yoga at a meditation center above the fog line in West Marin, and studied at a New Age nutrition institute whose slogan was "healing from the ground up."Negrin steeped herself in Ayurveda, Chinese cures, and herbal remedy home brews the way she'd once steeped herself in beurre blanc and demiglace. Show All

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  www.eastbayexpress.com/2007-02-21/news/really-slow-food - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/21/2007    Last Visited: 3/1/2007  

  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  
  Where There's Smoke . . .
  
  You'll find Uncle Willie and his "bugga juice."
  ...
  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  
  Give Cal Plan the Ax
  ...
  Alison Negrin traded in a glamorous chef career to reform abysmal hospital chow.Good luck with that.
  ...
  Alison Negrin wanted to change the soup.And she succeeded.It took her three years.
  ...
  Negrin is quick to admit the whole thing sounds crazy.A whopping 36 months to usher the simplest of soups, a recipe of half a dozen ingredients, from the lightbulb inside her head to the hard drive in the dieticians' office , where it would be analyzed, edited, and tweaked ad infinitum , and then at long last get printed out, sheathed in plastic, and filed in a spiral-ring binder that sits on a stainless-steel shelf in this crowded industrial kitchen.
  
  For Negrin, it was nonetheless a triumph, and so what if many people she meets just don't get it."When you're out in the world and people say, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'I'm the chef at John Muir,' they go, 'Oh, god, I was a patient there,'" she says.But Negrin's five years as a hospital chef have been in service of a mission: to change the profile of hospital food from bland, starchy, and processed to something reasonably close to actual, healthy food.Oh, and to help save the world in the process.
  
  Long ago in another life, in a restaurant kitchen designed especially for her, Negrin could change the soup whenever she liked based on a whim, some herb she'd picked up in Chinatown, or perhaps a cookbook that made her itch with curiosity.That was long before the John Muir gig, back when she was one of the Bay Area's chefs to watch.One whom the San Francisco Chronicle would write about in that breathless style food critics reserve for an electric new talent.
  
  On this fall evening, Negrin, now 54, lifts a lid to examine halibut baked over thinly sliced fennel.She walks next to the slow-moving conveyor belt that hospitals call the tray line, where each of half a dozen workers places a single item on the teal trays, looking more like factory workers than restaurant cooks.She tastes a broccoli floret."This is supposed to have the flavoring reduction on it," she protests to no one in particular.
  
  Negrin has a presence that transcends her five-foot height.She's dressed in a chef's jacket with black trim, a note of edgy in a kitchen humming with pale fluorescent lighting.She has wide, Mediterranean features (her father is Greek and Jewish), and eyes so large they look Coptic.She wears dangling silver craft-fair earrings, and sports a bob with fashionably streaky highlights.Artsy, even in middle age.
  
  It was art that got Negrin hooked on food in the first place.After college, she had a degree in sculpture and no clue what to do with her life.Cooking school was her lesser of evils, except that she hated the structure and the old-school European chefs at San Francisco's California Culinary Academy.Ellen McCarty, who was one year behind her at the culinary academy, recalls that Negrin had an intimidating vibe.
  ...
  In 1988, Negrin was working the upstairs cafe line there when she got a call from a headhunter.The recruiter offered Negrin the title of executive chef in a restaurant that didn't yet exist, in a town she'd never heard of.It intrigued her, so Negrin leaped.
  ...
  For starters, Sugitani flew everyone to Japan , Negrin, the restaurant's general manager, even the architect.
  ...
  Negrin was in epiphany land.A year later in Danville, she was the one inspiring the epiphanies.The Chronicle's food critic deemed Bridges the kind of restaurant you'd find in Paris or New York.
  
  But after years of success at Bridges and Ginger Island, a high-profile fusion bistro on Berkeley's Fourth Street, Negrin's inner art student began to question whether she wanted to be a fine-dining chef.After birthing a couple of restaurants, Negrin wanted to give birth to a kid , except that she couldn't, so she adopted.Nurturing her baby son gave Negrin the urge to go on nurturing.She taught the ABCs of cooking to inner-city kids, did yoga at a meditation center above the fog line in West Marin, and studied at a New Age nutrition institute whose slogan was "healing from the ground up."Negrin steeped herself in Ayurveda, Chinese cures, and herbal remedy home brews the way she'd once steeped herself in beurre blanc and demiglace. Show All

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  www.jwmag.org/site/c.fhLOK0PGLsF/b.5026997/k.92C0/Down_ - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/27/2009    Last Visited: 3/27/2009  

  Alison Negrin
  ...
  On a parallel path in Alamo, Calif., chef Alison Negrin, 57, is linking communities that once were not on speaking terms-the local foods movement and mainstream health care. Negrin's culinary creations once graced the menus of such Bay Area restaurants as Chez Panisse and Ginger Island. Now, as executive chef for John Muir Health Systems, she dreams up dishes for patients and the staff cafeteria on the hospital's three campuses, along with planning meals for meetings and other catered affairs there. Her role permits Negrin to tap both her love of haute cuisine and her interest in wellness, deepened by her studies of Chinese medicine.
  
  On a recent day at the hospital café, employees and visitors could opt for a whole-grain vegetable gratin or teriyaki salmon with papaya salsa, as well as a traditional Reuben sandwich from the grill. With Negrin's leadership and that of an in-house Healthy Food Committee, the hospital has pledged to buy more local foods, offer more seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables, and put more whole grains on its menus. "Given that hospitals are such large institutions and we purchase in such volume, we can affect how food is produced and distributed," Negrin says. She's partnering with managers at other hospitals across the region to boost the amount of local foods they all use and, by extension, shrinking their carbon footprint, Negrin says. Plus, she adds, "We're helping our local economy by buying from sources close by."

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  wc-web.civicasoft.com/about/visiting_us/whats_happening - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/8/2009    Last Visited: 2/8/2009  

  JMH will begin by supporting the market on opening day with a cooking demo featuring Executive Chef Allison Negrin from John Muir Hospital.

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  www.growermagazine.com/Newsletter/AgriBytes/tabid/60/De - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/22/2008    Last Visited: 12/20/2008  

  One example of a farm-to-hospital initiative is the John Muir Health System facilities in Concord and Walnut Creek, where executive chef Alison Negrin has replaced all frozen vegetables with fresh produce, most of which is grown within 150 miles of the hospital.

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  westernfarmpress.com/news/fresh-foods-0430/ - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/3/2008    Last Visited: 5/3/2008  

  One example of a "farm-to-hospital" initiative is the John Muir Health System facilities in the East Bay, where executive chef Alison Negrin (formerly chef at some of the Bay Area's best known restaurants, including Chez Panisse) has replaced all frozen vegetables with fresh produce, most of which is grown within 150 miles of the hospital.

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