Monday, January 23, 2012

Have you ever had great institutional food?

Posted by Jonathan Bender on Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Maybe its best to sometimes just stick with coffee.
  • Flickr: Parker Michael Night
  • Maybe it's best to sometimes just stick with coffee.
Lunch within an institutional dining room is sometimes about the choice that will make you the least sad. It's the turkey sandwich or burger in your office cafeteria — the things you pray are too simple to really get that far from edible. I was recently standing in a hospital cafeteria trying to determine the best course of dining action and trying to take clues from who was ordering what. It's the art of food profiling. Was the nurse who selected the chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes taking advantage of an employee discount or actually interested in the brown and crusty shoe-shaped wedge?

Have you ever had great institutional food, the kind of meal that makes you not just feel full but happy to have ordered it?

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The KC Star has a nice little cafeteria called The Nelson Room, named after the founder William Rockhill Nelson. Chef Dave of American Food and Vending does a great job, he's know for his sauces.

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Posted by Jcrl on 01/26/2012 at 4:15 PM

An all night cafeteria in Panama City Panama ---serves up a great selection!! Damn ---i wish i could recall the name of the place!!

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Posted by c on 01/23/2012 at 2:46 PM

I used to work at Western Missouri Mental Health Center back in 1987-8.

They had the BEST food I have ever eaten in a cafeteria. Ever.

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Posted by Wink Dinklemeyer on 01/23/2012 at 2:42 PM

In Bologna, Italy, I ate amazing food in a cafeteria.

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Posted by Jennifer Brizzi on 01/23/2012 at 12:42 PM

The cafeteria at work has a decent rotation of menu items like shortribs, fried catfish, oxtails, greens, mac n' cheese, etc. The oxtails are mandatory eating when they are on the menu, but there's too much of a good/cheap/fatty selection to eat down there very often. The breakfast bar alone has three kinds of hashbrowns and two kinds of gravy....a dangerous place for a junkie like me.

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Posted by Zeemanb on 01/23/2012 at 11:29 AM

I woke up in the Jackson County lockup one morning a few years ago and was given a cinnamon roll that was too die for. It had raisans. I never did figure out where they'd got them.

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Posted by reformed on 01/23/2012 at 10:45 AM

Marion Merrell Dow had really good food - and the Royals had winning records back then, too. Hmmm. Coincidence? No, Mr. K.

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Posted by Judy on 01/23/2012 at 10:43 AM

I did an internship at NBC while I was in college. The food in the employee cafeteria at 30 Rock was really quite delicious. They had great chefs who created new meals every day.

I have friends up at Cerner and down at Garmin who say their employee cafeterias offer quality foods.

It's impossible to compare a hospitals cafeteria to other professional-grade cafeterias... even if a hospital has decent food, you still know you're eating hospital food.

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Posted by Foodman on 01/23/2012 at 10:31 AM

My company has a training center in Columbus, OH and the food is AMAZING.

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Posted by Fastmetal on 01/23/2012 at 8:57 AM
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