天然食品採購指南

GO Natural Food Guide x Adventist Hospital

Vegetarian Menu Design Workshop 

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Many restaurants and vegetarian eateries offer vegetarian dishes that are limited in variety and often fail to provide truly healthy options. These dishes can be high in oil, starch, artificial colorings, and flavor enhancers, while lacking in protein, iron, fiber, and other nutrients. Balancing profitability with quality is a challenge for restaurant operators.

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The Vegetarian Menu Design Workshop is jointly organized by GO Natural Food Guide and Hong Kong Adventist Hospital's Dietary and Nutrition Department to provide practical solutions for designing and improving vegetarian menus. The workshop will offer insights from the perspective of restaurant owners, chefs, and dietitians.

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One of the course instructors is Ken, the executive chef of Ahealth@cafe at Hong Kong Adventist Hospital, who worked at a five-star hotel restaurant in Hong Kong for nearly 15 years before switching to his current role at the hospital's vegetarian restaurant seven years ago.  Whether it's creating sophisticated and exclusive vegetarian dishes for the hospital's VIP rooms or providing affordable vegetarian buffets for staff and the public, Ken can design unique and delicious vegetarian dishes to cater to different audiences.

 

Another course instructor is Wing, who will provide insights from the perspective of a restaurant owners and registered dietitian, as well as share his knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine nutrition, to help participants design vegetarian dishes that suit the needs of the Eastern body constitution.
 

 

Features

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• The course will be jointly conducted by restaurant operators, chefs, and registered dietitians from the hospital, with a focus on sharing practical experiences rather than just theories. The content of the course is highly practical and grounded in the real-world experience of restaurant operations

• The course covers a comprehensive range of topics designed to enhance knowledge and skills for designing vegetarian menus

• Emphasis will be placed on more interaction and communication with industry professionals, to discuss cooking techniques and operational challenges

 

Introduction

Cater to the needs of different vegetarian customers

It goes beyond just avoiding meat. Vegetarians have different preferences such as vegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian, egg-vegetarian, seafood-vegetarian, poultry-vegetarian and more. Different religions also have specific dietary requirements. How can we easily prepare ingredients to meet these diverse needs?

 

Introduce various new natural ingredients

The new generation of vegetarians mostly eat vegetarian food for health reasons. The practical crash course will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of plant-based foods that have become popular in recent years. In addition, it will focus on introducing other truly natural and healthy plant-based ingredients. The dishes are no longer limited to "Cooking vegetables".

 

Provide guidelines for a balanced diet

We will discuss how to create and assemble vegetarian meals that are filling, meet nutritional requirements, and are tailored to the needs of the Eastern body constitution.

 

Share practical tips and solve common problems

We will share preparation, processing, and cooking methods of ingredients to solve common problems in cooking vegetarian dishes, such as using too much oil, gravy, pigments, and monosodium glutamate. We will also address issues such as not feeling full, consuming too many carbohydrates, and a lack of protein, iron, fiber, and vitamins, as well as excessive fat content.

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Dissect the health benefits of a vegetarian diet

We will explore how a vegetarian diet can improve physical and mental health, reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Vegetarian food is also a happy food, purifying the mind and enhancing positive energy.

 

Demonstrate Chinese and Western dishes

We will demonstrate the order of plate arrangement and serving two Chinese and two Western vegetarian dishes and share them with the chefs.

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Takeaways from this workshop

After completing the course, participants will be able to:

• Provide real, natural, healthy, and delicious vegetarian food for customers to promote physical and mental well-being, resulting in increased customer satisfaction. 

• Design a diversified vegetarian menu to attract new customers

• Focus on costs while maintaining profitability