Menu Sustains Those With HIV or AIDS : Miami Beach: Chef creates special dishes for those with impaired immune systems.

Frank Wager had no idea how to eat healthy and his ignorance was helping the AIDS virus kill him.

Then he met chef Kathy Raffele on trendy South Beach, who has come up with special dishes for people with diminished immune systems. Now he’s one of about a dozen people with HIV or AIDS who eat Raffele’s cooking regularly.

“For the most part, people who have AIDS have no idea about the nutritional aspects that are very important to their health,” Wager said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the time or the background to eat what is good for us.”

Raffele, a transplanted New Yorker, says offering a special menu emerged from necessity earlier this year when she was cooking at Falcon’s Lair on the Beach. She now cooks at the nearby Coral Cafe.

“The restaurant I was working at was next to a gay club and most of the customers were gay,” she said. “We were getting a lot of customers in, requesting Caesar salad with no egg and pasta with no dairy. To make it easier on the waiter and myself, I just thought we would do a menu with items on it for people with compromised immune systems.”

One concern was that other customers not feel uncomfortable ordering dishes especially intended for people with AIDS. Special dishes are marked discreetly on the menu with asterisks.

“Everybody told me I was crazy,” Raffele said. “They said I would turn people away when they see there are this many items for HIV. . . . But once they eat the food and they think it’s OK, that’s what counts.”

She created a variation on ravioli that uses pureed vegetables with a sauce made from soy milk instead of cream. Many of her specialty dishes use garlic, basil and fruit--always fresh.

She had to shelve her French method of cooking and begin to concentrate on lighter, healthier ingredients.

To develop a strategy for such a menu, Raffele consulted nurse Susan Luck of the nearby StratoGen Clinic. Luck, also from New York, had worked in Manhattan under a grant putting together healthy diets for people with the AIDS virus, who often lose a lot of weight suddenly.

“The medical mode has approached their nutrition with food that is high in fats for high calories,” Luck said. “They want to fatten them up, but very often the fats themselves are problematic.”

Luck said some raw foods, such as an egg in a Caesar salad, may contain bacteria that an immune-deficient body cannot tolerate. Dairy products also contain lactose, a sugar she says many with HIV cannot digest.

Raffele uses lots of pasta because it’s easy to digest and high in nutrients.

Wager said his health improved immediately after he began eating her food. “You can actually improve the immune system by eating right,” the 41-year-old real estate agent said.

Raffele, who is currently working on a cookbook, said having a place where people with AIDS can sit down to have a specially designed meal is as healthy psychologically as it is physically.

“Sometimes they get depressed when they’re home by themselves, and they don’t eat good or they eat junk food,” Raffele said. “Someplace like here, they can come in with their friends, sit down in a nice atmosphere and not have to worry about what they are going to eat.”