Food Court @ VA Hospital

Decent pizza and I always get the yoghurt parfait here. Wouldn’t mind this cafeteria as an employee or an outpatient visitor.

I stopped here after an appointment today. A bottle of water, a bottle of juice, a cheese burger, fries, and onion rings was ~$ 9.50.
The burger had already been cooked and they just threw it back on the grill to melt the cheese. The onion rings were ok, but not a lot for the price they charge.
My daughter ate 3 fries before she was done (that’s all she wanted), they were bland, nothing great.
I’ll eat elsewhere next time.

It’s so bad, guys. But the salads are healthy and edible.
Now, I will always think that a hospital cafeteria is an important member of the team that supports the patients and the staff.
But everything here is reheated packaged/​frozen/​canned.
While everything is so cheap that you might think that you can go around buy a little thing here and a little thing there, don’t do it. All you set yourself up for is a tapas from hell.
The chicken nuggets are mushy. The fries are mushy. The potato wedges are mushy. The chicken wings are mushy. The mac and cheese is mushy. Don’t do it even though you might think you crave these items. Don’t do it!
The salads are huge portions and relatively cheap, so just do that.
I’m ashamed I have tried so much.

Okay, this still only gets 2 stars because friendly employees are no excuse for bad food!
I have to give some personal shoutouts to the fine VA canteen staff! Steven is a doll. He is always smiling, showing his pearly whites whenever he toasts my bagel. After the depressing departure of Johnny (he got promoted!) I didn’t know how I would ever survive my morning bagel trips… until Steven came along! Steven is nice to all of the Veterans and he is friendly, which can be a rarity around here sometimes.
And to my girl Duari who is also great! Duari makes an awesome salad and wrap (she actually rolls it tightly) and she is a friendly cashier. She knows exactly what I order every morning (a bagel, so not that hard to remember but it is the point!) so she always has my order ready to cash out. Also, she is really sweet.
Steven and Duari need a raise! VA Canteen forever (except for the food).
PS — What is up with the flourescent yellow food they serve sometimes? I think it is supposed to be some kind of chicken dish but instead it looks like some radioactive sewage.

I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said the VA should «Serve those who served our country». Little did we know that A. Bro-​ham was talking about serving veterans disgusting, greasy fake food.
The VA café on the third floor of the JP VA hospital is in cardiac arrest. Much of the food is fried, prepackaged and just unsatisfying. For an industry devoted to promoting the healthcare of Veterans, I was incredibly disappointed by the selection.
The hamburgers sit precooked, for what I can only imagine is a lifetime, in a steal steam box, unworthy even of the heat lamps that warm the fake fried chicken, powered potatoes and the petrified pizza.
Your best bet is to go with a wrap or a salad. But be on guard: some salad/​wrap makers are better than others. It’s always a good idea, if not a flat out necessity, to monitor and conduct the assembly of your food as it is being made lest you get served heaping quantities of salad dressing, food you didn’t order or lackluster wraps that unwrap themselves.
Breakfast is no worse than lunch at the VA, so at least there is something to be said here about consistency. And hey, there are vending machines on this floor that vend pop-​tarts. It’s a bad day when you resort to eating pop-​tarts because your other option is just too fake.
Also on the plus side, the people who work here are, generally, nice funny people.

When I forget to bring lunch with me I make the trek to the third floor and dutifully get into the salad bar line.
If you’ve ever been here, I’m the girl who will say «I don’t know what I want yet, you go ahead» when the guy behind the salad bar is asking who’s next, and it’s only because I want the girl to make my salad instead. I’m sorry for doing this to you, hypothetical person, but it needs to be done.
However, the guy really isn’t so bad at making salads, you just have to stay on top of him. «More lettuce», «I said no cheese», «Only one scoop of dressing», and then you’ve got a nearly perfect salad. Until you find a hair in it, which thankfully has never happened to me, but I’ve seen it happen to others.
Basically, I wouldn’t go here if I didn’t have to, but it could be a lot worse than it is.

Update: Everyone loved Johnny so much that he’s moved up! So sadly, I don’t get to see his smiling face anymore.
However, I’ll keep this at two stars because I have been coming here a lot recently for salads at lunchtime (too cold to take the walk to Subway!), and I must say, they’re doing a good job. The attitudes of the workers have improved a bit, and they are now more receptive to my requests for substitutions, etc.
My review of the actual food still stands.

Olivia! I love you for reviewing this place. I work right across the street and am sometimes forced to eat here because there is NOTHING else around for at least 5 blocks. The good news is, is that having no restaurants around forces me to bring my lunch to work with me and A) eat healthier and B) save money… so on to the review!
I would first like to mention that there is now a Canteen on the the first floor of the VA medical center. What a JOKE! This little lunch counter actually sells and «tries» to make Starbucks brand beverages. Except there are no guidelines and I don’t think the canteen staff were ever trained on how to make a proper frappachino. I sometimes get iced coffee from the canteen, but it’s appallingly weak (definitely not double brewed) so i’ve started having them add a shot of espresso to it. So today, I say per usual, «large iced coffee with a shot of espresso» so the incredibly rude staff (who are always rude and unprofessional) makes me a hot coffee and a shot of espresso on the side. When i say «oh um, I ordered an iced coffee with a shot of espresso in it», she says «no you didn’t!» and proceeds to make a gigantic scene and goes out of her way to make me feel dumb and like a piece of shit. Nice. After huffing and puffing, she makes what I actually ordered and when I say «sorry, do I owe you anything for the difference?» she just dismissively waves her hand at me and turns her dead eyes to terrorize the next unsuspecting victim of her cruelty.
One time I bought a salad from the canteen and it was completely rotten! It had chicken, which if I had eaten probably would have killed me. They keep their salads and dessert behind glass so you can’t tell that they’re rotten. All the food, save for their sandwiches that are made to order, comes from another company (probably in another state) and you know it’s been sitting on a truck for 3 days. They used to make pizza but that was probably too hard for them.
So onto the main cafeteria aka what Unilocal is calling the «food court» except that it’s just a small, dinky cafeteria on the 3^rd floor of a hospital. This place is run slightly more efficiently than the canteen which always has long lines, rotten food, and rude staff. The food in the cafeteria is pretty appalling though, not so much how it’s prepared but more what they offer. Greasy grilled cheese, dripping with butter, soup that will shoot your sodium level up 10x what it should be, fried chicken sitting under a heat lamp for hours, corn on the cob that is literally swimming in a vat of melted butter, pizza with 10 lbs of government cheese on top, stale raspberry danish the size of your head. Isnt this a friggin’ hospital? I agree with Olivia about the hospital getting repeat business on strokes and heart attacks from feeding it’s patients this kind of crap.
On the tiny plus side… they do have salad! I often get the little side salad for $ 2 that is actually quite good, round it out with a baked potato and there’s lunch. I sometimes venture out and try whatever entrée they have cooked up for the day, but most of the time it’s pretty disappointing and not a very good value. I do remember a nice pork medallion I had there once… all the entrees always come with soggy green beans. It’s kind of like prison food (what I imagine of prison food anyway).
Also on the plus side, the staff here are actually really nice and when the cashier ladies say have a nice day, I think they really mean it.

Feed the sick people garbadge and they will forever need Hospitals
So I guess its obvious hospital food sucks… But why, why why, oh the humanity!
The panini– I refer to it as the Painini. We have gotten sick.
The baked scrotum was a littly dry but good with lemon, and water cabbage, and fake boxed mash, with fake package gravy. Some vitamins stuck around and made me happy.
We pretended the pizza was ok for a long time.
The salad has a hard boiled egg in it. That is good.
The grilled grease with fake cheese is made on extremely fluffy bread like bread and it is satisfying.
The french toast is crusty and has a metallic after taste. The bacon is made from welfare pigs.
The giant fake waffles are fluffy and yummy, with the fake butter, the fake maple syrup and the fake and real fruit. But if you eat it fast and you eat it all you start to have regrets in life. The fluffy scrambled eggs are real. And only 65cents a serving!
The atmosphere of this cafeteria is kind of depressing with the flouresent lights, slamming doors, broken down tiny 70s booths, TV news informing us about the war on terror, and maimed and mentally ill veterans trying to fill the void.
I gave the VA food court 2 stars for bravery, even with all the falling hygene codes and nutritional standards, a lot of poor veterans and doctors depend on this place every day.