The food served at the cafeteria of Fawcett Memorial Hospital is great, and I don't just mean great…read morefor hospital food, I mean great as in it rivals that found in restaurants. I'd take food from there over McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc any day. When I was in high school, I stopped in there every morning to get breakfast and take to school. Plus, there's free wifi.
At breakfast time, they have a choice of hot cereals (oatmeal, cream of wheat, and/or grits), a hot bar with bacon, eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, biscuits & gravy, etc, Kellogs cereals, fresh fruit and cottage cheese (sold by the ounce), Kellogs cereals, and grab & go salads and deserts. I usually either bought hot cereal or fresh fruit and cottage cheese.
The food is REALLY good at lunch time. They always have something different in there; on some days (probably once a month), Gene the grill master makes philly cheese steak sandwiches which are spectacular, or rubin sandwiches which are also spectacular. Otherwise he grills hamburgers, chicken fingers, and jalopinio poppers. They have a different main course meal everyday and it is almost always awesome; examples are shrimp scampi, crab cakes, chicken marsala, spagetti and meat sauce, turkey, shrimp gumbo... They have pizza available tuesdays and fridays. They have an awesome salad bar for 30 cents/ounce. They have great homemade soups.
There is a wide variety of beverages available. They have both Pepsi and Coke fountains (with free filtered water available), iced tea, Maxwell House coffee, cappicino by International Coffees, hot chocolate, and bottled soft drinks. Otis Spunkmyer cookies and muffins are available. There is a collection of snacks available at the register, including trail mix, chips, etc.
There is a myth that hospital food is expensive, but this is not the case at FMH. The food is better than fast food, and the prices are better than a casual restaurant. Some people dislike cafeterias that price by the ounce because they feel that they rip them off, but not here; the scales are inspected annually by the FL Dept. of Agriculture for accuracy just as all other businesses in the state, and the cafeteria has never failed a weights & measures inspection.
Even better than the food is the friendly cafeteria staff. They are very friendly and will remember you by name. The environment is not at all like a nursing home cafeteria; most of the patrons are regulars: employees and nearby residents, along with some patient visitors. It is not filled with sick patients; the patients have their meals delivered to their rooms from the kitchen, and there aren't even any patient rooms on the first floor. It's really a great place for anyone to have breakfast or lunch. This cafeteria will always be an important high school memory for me. The only down side is that they're not open at supper time.
