Chef Donnie Ferneau Proud of Moonlighting Gig with Memory Care

Donnie Ferneau

Most folks know by now that chef Donnie Ferneau closed his Good Food by Ferneau business in North Little Rock to become the executive chef at Jeremy Hutchinson’s 1836 Club in Little Rock.

What you may not know is that Ferneau also has a gig as executive chef with Memory Care of America, which provides residential care to sufferers of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Memory Care, based in Nashville, Tennessee, operates in Little Rock as Memory Care of Little Rock at Good Shepherd.

Memory Care, which has locations throughout the South, announced Ferneau’s hiring earlier this month, but Ferneau told Arkansas Business that he’d been working there for some time.

The chef said he works directly with Dr. Morgan Sauer, chief medical director of Memory Care, to develop recipes for Memory Care residents. Sauer theorizes, Ferneau said, that the proper diet can alleviate Alzheimer’s and dementia.

“I come up with the recipes and I develop the cuisine that encompasses his theories,” Ferneau said. “And so he’s worked with me. He’s trained me. He’s filled me full of his knowledge, and basically what we’re trying to do, we’re going completely chemical free, antibiotic free. The diet is a gluten-free, sugar-free, anti-inflammatory diet.”

But, the chef said, the food still tastes like good home cooking. “It’s delicious.”

“A lot of the stuff we’re doing is very innovative, very ground-breaking,” Ferneau said.

Ferneau is proud of his work with Memory Care, which, he says, will not interfere with his work at the 1836 Club. “My biggest inspiration for this is my parents, having a much happier life as they age,” he said.

“With the 1836 Club, I can cook steaks and all that all day long and make it delicious, great food. But [at Memory Care], I still get to do something that I truly believe in and it’s rewarding and it can make a difference in somebody’s life.”