Warning/Disclosure: Swallowing medical puns may cause frowning.
Sign here: ___ Initial here: ___ And here: ___
Admission: Hospital food is known to have a case of chronic pain of taste buds.
No one gives a referral to these places. They rely on convenience, serving breakfast in morning and pizza and deli for lunch and dinner.
This place is on ground floor of the hospital's atrium, which has a high ceiling reminiscent of an old European cathedral.
I grabbed a café gurney (cafeteria tray), and performed my Prep-work: Got plastic forks and scalpals ... er ... knives. Got paper sponges ... er ... napkins.
The prepackaged food wrapped in foil was made in an Operating Room, probably off-site.
Those MREs need an MRI to see if that is what you want. My wife ordered an Egg, Sausage, Cheese Biscuit. They had some greasy discharge into the bun. The sausage had a dark spot, but my diagnosis was a benign over-cooked spot.
So, I performed a bypass on the prepackaged foods and headed to the grill, because I wanted an EKG (Eggs Kindly Grilled).
Fruit bar: Sort of an open hearth sugary. Fruit in the bins is fresh and the price is not too high (weighed). My bowl of strawberries, cantaloupe and blueberries was about $1.50.
At the grill, only the omelet and French toast get the Intensive Care, using fresh-cracked eggs.
Boiled eggs are sitting in water like gallstones in a jar... OK, maybe not that gross.
I used my senses (ear, nose & throat, Doctor) to determine the desirability of the pre-scrambled eggs sitting in the stainless steel bins, with tiny puddles of water (I was tempted to hold out my hand and yell "sponge"!). The eggs, pure yellow, look like they were made from a premixed carton. Those bin options do not make the cut for me.
Vital signs of hash browns in a bin: 60 over 40 on clumpy and mushy portions. The slight crispy portions have long lost their crisp.
I order a standard plate with fresh-cracked eggs, tator tots and Texas Toast (instead of biscuit, which I saw was hard as a hockey puck). Her facial expression when I ordered my eggs freshly scrambled instead of taking them from the bin was enough to give me arrhythmia. But she did it.
The Attending server is the pace maker for orders. She is quite good at preparing food while asking the next customer's order. She can keep two omelets cooking properly while making plates from the bins of food. But I am nervous watching my eggs get browned (I don't like that) while she listens to the next order.
Tator tots look like they got a DNR (do not resuscitate) order. Maybe if you send it to the Lab, it may be judged useful for furniture sliders.
Cinnamon Roll was big, but too tough on the outer layer. Surgery was needed to split into two pieces anyway. So, an autopsy with the lesion down the middle showed hardening of the outeries, but soft on the inside, with just enough cinnamon embolisms in the spiral seam of the dough.
Bacon was perfectly crisp and flat, symptoms of 'cooked elsewhere, heated here.'
Orange juice: Can only get in a bottle. I grabbed a catheter tube (straw) to drink it.
Coffee: Egbert Douwe, made in bulk, in a BM ... uh...clarification: 'big machine.'
Option: Starbucks in the floor above by the waiting room. Needless to say, Starbucks does well in the waiting area.
Post op cashier says the cost of my meal: $9.11 (plus or minus some cents)
Stats: Judging by the number of captive staph ...er... staff customers wearing scrubs and hair nets, this place has a business pulse even without the steady stream of patients' relatives who have more on their minds than the food quality. But then, most of them are not Yelpers.
The Dining Room has comfortable chairs, a nice respite from the rigid chairs in the hospital room that, afterwards, feel like you were in traction.
Recovery room (for diners): the gentle flowing water wall portion of the dining area brings calm to relatives whose loved one is upstairs getting treated. I stared until I was nearly under anesthesia.
To close and sew up this café review in one word: flatlining ... I'V had better. read more