Little Company of Mary Hospital Cafeteria

My husband was recently hospitalized for a biking accident. He is home now recovering nicely and getting stronger everyday.  He was admitted to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, California.  He was there for 6 days and I got to experience first hand the patient's menu for lunch and dinner and more importantly, the food at the cafeteria.

Patient food was not bad at all till they ordered the soft diet, for no good reason...then everything was like baby food.  So as long as you do not have any diet restrictions as a patient, you'll be a happy camper.  A sample menu for patients: good soup (can't remember what it was) vegetables, fish, tuna salad, chocolate chip cookies.

The regular food at the cafeteria was amazingly very good. Very good that I looked forward to the meals everyday. As far as I can remember, it was always very good. When I worked across the street at the Medical Center, in the early 80's, I remember running  there for lunch and getting food to go for myself and a few of the nurses. My son volunteered there several years ago and remembered the food being good.

The first day, we had barbecued chicken and macaroni & cheese with bacon in it. I had carrots with it to make my meal healthy. The following day, they had another chicken dish with an amazing sauce served with roasted potatoes that had a lot of flavor. They had a chicken with an artichoke cream sauce with mashed potatoes and asparagus. One evening I wasn't very hungry so I decided to just have the tortilla soup which was very satisfying.  Another evening, I had the chicken stuffed with spinach with a cream sauce, served with collard and rice. I have never had collard before; very bitter which is o.k. but if I may suggest to the chef....bacon would make this perfect ...so the saltiness of the bacon would complement the bitterness of the collard. On our last day, I had the teriyaki tofu with glazed pineapple on top served with combination of regular potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions etc. etc. That was sooooo goood!

 

I told my friends that visited to get some food to go....price was right and the value was great.  We couldn't get over how good everything was.  Someone mentioned that the food at Torrance Memorial Hospital is quite the opposite.  So if you have a choice of hospitals, go where you can have gourmet meals.

I tip my hat (if I were wearing a hat) to the talented chefs of Little Company of Mary Hospital.    The big question is: are they on opentable.com?