News

Fine Dining For Retirees

Chefs leaving restaurants for jobs in senior communities
By Andrea Weigl - Staff writer
Published: Sun, Feb. 01, 2009

Chef Oscar La Fuente is slicing carpaccio -- only he's not using beef but two pieces of salmon and tuna, stacked on top of one another, frozen and rolled into a cylinder.

The result is razor-thin spirals of pink-hued fish that are laid in overlapping spirals on a narrow white plate, punctuated on one end by a shredded salad of apple and fennel. "Next time, I'll do it with swordfish and tuna," says La Fuente. That way, the fish carpaccio will have more contrasting colors.

This is part of a four-course meal La Fuente prepares for a dozen people in November. After an amuse-bouche and the carpaccio, there was seared duck breast with vanilla-scented carrot puree and apple cider syrup, oven-roasted loup de mer (sea bass) with lobster risotto and tarragon orange beurre rouge, and for dessert a mocha tart.

The menu was standard fare at La Fuente's last place of employment, Heron's restaurant at The Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary, Wake County's only AAA-rated five-diamond hotel. But La Fuente, 35, is now the executive chef at The Cypress, a continuing care retirement community.

He is among a small but seemingly growing number of chefs leaving fine dining to feed retirees, upending the perception that retirement homes serve only bland, institutional fare.

Expecting the best

At the Emerald Room, The Cypress' exclusive dining venue, La Fuente still works with gourmet ingredients. As more residents move in, La Fuente hopes to buy meat and produce from the same local sustainable farmers he used as banquet chef and then as executive chef at Herons.

He can afford to buy quality food, because the residents at The Cypress own homes that run $400,000 to $900,000. Ownership has its privileges, including casual and fine dining, weekly maid service, concierge service, a beauty salon and barber shop, an art studio, a heated indoor pool and spa, and a fitness center. The community will ultimately have about 325 homes and reports it has sold 85 percent of the 202 homes already built.

Luxury living in demand

High-end retirement communities are one of the most competitive real estate markets right now.

Beyond The Cypress at Strickland and Lead Mine roads, Kane Realty of Raleigh plans to break ground this spring on The Cardinal at North Hills, which will have a 50,000-square-foot clubhouse with formal and informal dining options. Gordon Grubb, a Raleigh developer, hopes to start pre-selling homes for an inside-the-beltline, 250-unit retirement community within a year.

About 725,000 Americans lived in 2,240 continuing care retirement communities in the U.S. in 2005, according to the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. As baby boomers retire, they are demanding more from retirement communities than those who grew up during the Depression have. They want several bedrooms and bathrooms, a fitness center, golf course, bistros, cafés and fine dining options. There are at least 55 such communities in North Carolina.

"Nationally the trend is for retirement communities to offer more choices and flexibility in dining than in the past," Lauren Shaham, the association's vice president of communications, said via e-mail. "Residents want to be able to have a broad selection, multiple venues to eat in and high quality. I've heard of several [continuing care and retirement communities] that have lured fine dining chefs to meet this growing demand."

More chefs jumping ship

La Fuente isn't the only chef in Raleigh to make the change.

Todd Ohle, 33, a Culinary Institute of America grad, was the director of culinary operations for Rocky Top Hospitality, a Raleigh restaurant chain that owns Michael Dean's, Red Room tapas lounge and four other local restaurants. Ohle is now the food and beverage director at The Cypress.