Review: Hospital Food Comes to Furrs!

For those of you who reminisce about a past vacation spent in the luxury of a hospital, enjoying four-star service and five-star cuisine, have I got good news for you! Furr's "Fresh Buffet" Cafeterias are now offering hospital fare for their valued customers who have gotten tired of the same old home style cooking at other family restaurants.

As vegetarians (I'm stricter than my wife is), we used to eat at Furr's occasionally, because of their vegetable and salad variety. Imagine our delight when we recently went back to Furr's (in our home town of Fort Smith, Arkansas) and found an entirely new buffet menu had been adopted.

As a 90% of the time strict vegetarian, I stick to fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds almost all the time (as advised in Genesis 1:29). However, on the advice of my very understanding and very wise doctor, Phil Agent, MD, I will occasionally eat fish for the omega 3 and 6 oils that seem to be so important. When we go out for fish, we aim for a variety, staying away from catfish, which has very little food value, and heading for either Furr's or Long John Silver's - depending on our appetite ... and our bank account!

Generally, Furr's has supplied us with a great salad selection, lots of properly done veggies, and several fish dishes to choose from. Generally.

However, as I said before, on our last visit we were very disappointed. I made notes:

• The cajun baked tilapia was almost completely flavorless, which is pretty remarkable for anything cajun!, and it was very dry, despite swimming in butter.
• The featured and advertised butterflied shrimp was so over cooked it wasn't crunchy, it was hard! And flavorless.
• The usually reliable baked cod was almost cold and ... greasy! Now how do you make baked cod greasy?? Oh, and hard around the edges. It wasn't flavorless - it tasted greasy.
• I gave up and tried the fried catfish despite it's lack of food value (at this point I was just hungry for some decent fish!) and, much to my surprise it was cold, chewy, and overcooked. (The surprise comment was sarcasm.) And it was, y'know, flavorless.

The highlight of the meal was the tartar sauce which was tangy, creamy, and worked wonderfully to conceal the awful fish dishes. The salads were still good. It's apparently very difficult to ruin pasta, carrot and raisin, and plain lettuce and tomato salads.

Overall, we should have gone to Long John Silver's. And we probably will the next time we go out for fish.
Unless, you know, we're longing for hospital food.
But then, the hospital cafeteria is cheaper.

Stick to the veggies.