First: All drollery aside, Mt. Sinai is a hundred times better than either of the LIJ joints I was in. (My ID doctor said that if I had to stay over the weekend, he’d take me on a tour of the chichi $1,500-a-night suites on the hotel floor.) I’m still glad to be home, especially with all the good wishes from everyone.
But I know, while you’re writing the get-well cards and sending the chocolates, you’re definitely thinking: What about the food?
Let me first admit: I have a soft spot for airplane food. The little individual compartments and containers are very compelling to me (but maybe that’s just my OCD talking). I have never had a completely inedible meal on an airplane, and once, in Delta biz class, I actually said “Yum!” while I was eating. My only complaint is that the flight attendants just say “Beef or pasta?” without explaining more, and then I don’t want to hold up the whole process by saying, “How would you say that beef is prepared? And what’s the cut of meat? And is that linguine or shells?”
So, that said, I didn’t find the hospital food that bad–at first. I’d been actively fearing it because several years ago I went to a restaurant-supply convention here in NYC, where I stood mesmerized and morbidly fascinated in front of a robotic food-dispensing machine for use in “institutions such as prisons and hospitals” (suggested the demo video). A huge stainless-steel box contained Nutrient Gloop A, and it was pumped through springy tubes, then squirted in precisely measured portions onto trays running by on a conveyor belt. I was scared straight, as they say.
But fortunately there was no Nutrient Gloop on my tray in Forest Hills. Most food items were recognizable. The separately heated entree dish and coffee mug provided the familiar reference point of dining in the sky. The trouble with the airplane-food analogy is that I’ve never been on a plane for more than three meals. My first hospital stay, eight days total, would be the equivalent of jetting to Australia and back four times in a row. In the hospital, you get a special jiggly bed that ensures you won’t die of deep-vein thrombosis, but the stewardesses aren’t the least bit cute. And, at least at LIJ in Forest Hills, you don’t even get a choice of beef or pasta.
And what your menu says rarely correlates with what’s on your tray. Best example: a promised chicken cacciatore took the form of tuna casserole with tricolor rotini–very jarring if you’re expecting chix with mushrooms. Some items required a little imagination to match them up with their labels. At first I thought “Chinese-style roast chicken” was another case of a failed menu writing. Then I realized the little scallion slices and the brown glaze signified “Chinese-style.”
And then some things were just straight-out weird: one day I got some beef stew with mandarin oranges. Yes, the ones you get in the syrup in the cans. Is it tacky of me to blame this on the fact this was a Jewish hospital? This was perhaps some institutional interpretation of Passover brisket? That’s the only real-life foodstuff I could peg this concoction to.
Additionally, there was a disturbing lack of concern for nutrition. Partially hydrogenated spread was the norm. I, a heart patient, got coffee for breakfast every morning. And dessert portions were always physically larger than entree portions. Which I guess was supposed to be a perk, but only seemed to reinforce the miserableness of being in the hospital, as the big bricks of gooey cake practically screamed, “You poor hopeless sickie! Here’s a treat!”
After a few days of this, I was living that dumb joke: The food is terrible, and the portions are so small! At every meal, I’d been diligently cleaning as much of my plate as I could before I was gripped with utter despair (I drew the line at the margarine), but on the morning of the third day, I was weak and dizzy with hunger. Fortunately, Tamara started the daily dinner delivery that night, but by then I’d already been carted down to the special heart-monitoring floor, as I gasped, “It’s just low blood sugar…need REAL food badly…”
Getting transferred to LIJ in Manhasset was a step up, because there at least I got a little menu to choose entrees from each day. Again, descriptions rarely gibed with reality, and chicken broth, a plastic mug of tasteless murk, accompanied every meal. One morning I just started crying right off the bat; I was crushed by the task of discerning actual oatmeal bits amid the starchy pap. I felt like Oliver Twist, but without the pluck or, of course, the desire for more. But the green beans weren’t so mercilessly boiled, the dessert portions were a bit more moderate, and fresh fruit made an occasional appearance. One night I got a thimbleful of real butter, but the bread to put it on was like mattress stuffing. I rubbed it on the ubiquitous green beans instead.
After all that, Mt. Sinai was like Babbo, Le Bernardin and Jean-Georges all rolled together. The nightly bulletin applied a bit of hyperbole to the next day’s choices–though to be fair, a “seasonal” green salad in December would be iceberg lettuce and carrot shreds. Otherwise, I felt like I had a new nutritional lease on life, with my choice of butter or margarine (duh), salad and fruit options galore, and dinner entrees so edible that I fortunately can’t remember any of them.
So, a tip to hospitals: If you make your patient cry or swoon in her chair, it might be time to reevaluate the kitchen. And future patients should consider this: Food quality appears to correlate directly with the quality of the medical care. If you get served spinach that inspires you to sing that “Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts” song, tell ’em to put their scalpels away, and make a run for the door.