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A New Chef, A New Kitchen, A New Way to Nourish

Meet Darby Blount, RMH-NY’s new head chef, RMH-NY's meal program, and the new Community Floor kitchen.

Chef Darby making food in the new kitchen.

There’s a particular kind of courage it takes to leave everything you know for something you believe in. Darby Blount moved from a luxury resort in the Appalachian Mountains to New York City this year for exactly that reason. The city was simultaneously intoxicating and terrifying. But when she heard about the head chef position at Ronald McDonald House New York, something clicked. Three months in, she’s standing in a bright new kitchen on our freshly renovated Community Floor, and she tells me that even though she works constantly, “every day feels like vacation.”

That’s not the kind of thing you say unless you mean it.

Darby didn’t grow up planning to be a chef. She fell into the kitchen almost by accident. At 22, she decided to try cooking and started working at the luxury resort where she eventually stayed for years. That’s where she met Chef Garson, a mentor who terrified her at first. He was exacting. Official. The kind of chef who believes that cooking isn’t just a job; it’s a calling that demands respect for every ingredient, discipline, and obsessive cleanliness before you’re allowed to hold a knife.

Darby didn’t think she’d make it.

But she did. Chef Garson softened once she proved herself, and he became the person who shaped not just her technique but her whole philosophy about food. “He taught me it’s not just being a cook,” she says. “It’s about being a culinary professional and understanding where the food is coming from, how to treat it with respect.”

That’s the person who’s now feeding our families.

The transition from West Virginia to New York, from a resort kitchen to a nonprofit that feeds exhausted, frightened people, is significant. But Darby frames it as obvious. This is where she wanted to be. This is what food is supposed to do. And now, with our Community Floor officially open—a warm, welcoming space built around a gleaming new kitchen—she has the chance to do it exactly the way she imagined.

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Food as Medicine

“I think food is much more than nourishment,” Darby told me, and you can feel the conviction in every word. “It’s a great form of hospitality and caring for somebody else.”

This matters because the families who come to us are not looking for a meal. They’re looking for a moment to breathe. They’re looking for something that tastes like home, even if home is far away. They’re scared. Their children are sick. The world has become very small and very frightening, and then they walk into Ronald McDonald House New York and there’s a kitchen and from it families smell something real, food that someone put care and thought into making.

Darby understands this instinctively. Her menu will rotate on a 28-day cycle—something she’s still building out as she learns what our families actually want. She did a family survey a few weeks ago and found eggs and soup mentioned on almost every form. But there were also requests for Filipino food, for Indian dishes, for representation of the cultures and traditions our families bring with them. She’s already started introducing dishes that honor those requests. Last week: Indian food. This week: comfort meals with a more traditional American approach. Next: Filipino specialties that give the families who suggested them a chance to see their culture celebrated in our kitchen.

But here’s what’s radical about this approach: she’s not just taking requests. She’s inviting families to cook with her.

“I really hope to invite the caretakers into the kitchen with me,” she says, “to help prepare a meal and showcase their culture or their favorite dish.”

Think about what that means. In a time when so much has been taken; normalcy, certainty, even a child’s health. We’re offering something back. Agency. Belonging. We’re saying: you matter so much that we want your hands in this kitchen. We want your stories. We want to learn from you.

Join Chef Darby in the Kitchen

Want to sponsor a meal and cook with Chef Darby? Our Community Floor kitchen is designed for volunteers. Whether you’re an experienced cook or you’ve never held a knife with confidence, Darby needs people willing to show up, learn, and feed our families alongside her. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about being part of something that matters.

Volunteer at Ronald McDonald House New York

The Vulnerability of Growth

Here’s the part that’s going to make you root for Darby if you haven’t already: she’s an introvert.

“I don’t love talking,” she admits with the kind of honesty that’s either completely refreshing or deeply uncomfortable, depending on who you are. “But it’s fake it till you make it.”

She says this because she knows what’s ahead. Every day, she’ll meet new volunteers at different skill levels, from different walks of life. She’ll have to be adaptable and patient and welcoming. She’ll have to stretch that introvert muscle over and over again. She knows it, and she’s choosing to do it anyway.

That’s the person your support sustains. Someone who showed up from West Virginia with a philosophy about food and a respect for the people she feeds. Someone who’s willing to be uncomfortable in service of something larger. Someone who believes that a good meal is an act of love, and that our families deserve love in every form, especially when they’re scared.

What Home Tastes Like

Darby told me something near the end of our conversation that I can’t stop thinking about. When I asked what makes a good meal for families who are scared and far from home, she didn’t talk about technique or presentation. She talked about offering meals that would be “comforting to them, that’s going to give them the nourishment that they need.” She talked about making sure that whoever comes through the buffet line, whatever their restrictions, whatever their emotional state, “can find something that’s going to make them feel seen.

That’s what’s happening in our new Community Floor kitchen that we named Helping Hands kitchen. It’s a place where food becomes an act of radical inclusion. Where a chef who faked it till she made it is teaching a whole community that showing up authentically—even when you’re scared, even when it’s hard—is how you change everything.

Darby Blount didn’t move to New York for the glittering city or the bright lights. She moved for this: the chance to feed people who need to remember that they belong somewhere. That someone sees them. That in the middle of the hardest moment of their lives, there’s still a kitchen where a meal is being made with their name in mind.

Help Us Feed Our Community

Our new meal program is ramping up thoughtfully. Right now, Darby is preparing two lunches and two dinners per week as we train volunteers and build capacity. The goal is to expand significantly over the coming months, with the possibility of sous chefs joining the team to help shoulder the work.

But here’s what we need: resources to make this happen at the scale our families deserve. Donations to the Ronald McDonald House New York culinary program help us:

Source cultural ingredients that families request—the specialty items from small farms or specialty importers that make a Filipino dish taste like someone’s grandmother made it.
Train and support volunteers who want to cook alongside our families and help expand meal capacity.
Build a menu cycle that’s diverse, inclusive, and responsive to the real needs and wishes of the people we serve.
Create moments of belonging for families in the hardest season of their lives.

Every dollar goes directly into food that carries meaning. Into ingredients that tell a story. Into the kind of nourishment that’s about so much more than calories.

If you’d like to support our meals program and help us expand this vital work, please consider making a donation to the Ronald McDonald House New York culinary experience. Every contribution helps us nourish not just bodies, but hope.

Ronald McDonald House New York provides a safe, supportive home for children living with cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses, and their families. Our meal program is just one way we say: you’re not alone. You’re home.