Jay Rayner does hospital food: part 1

So one of the side effects about spending a week in hospital with Mrs F in ostensibly a coma, is that I have had the opportunity to enjoy the gourmet delights of hospital food. Now let me explain something before I start. I am a veteran of many hospital and hospice visiting campaigns, with medals received for action all over the country. The particular highlight up until now has to have been South Tyneside hospital Christmas Eve 2013, when four of us were almost taken out by a fusillade of sprouts that were so hard that the Heimlich manoeuvre and emergency dentistry was required.

So cut to today and your correspondent was lucky enough to be offered the delectable ‘Texas style chilli’. Firstly full disclosure, I travel to the US a lot, for my sins (or work as it is more commonly known) and was in Houston a mere 3 weeks ago so I feel that I am in a position of authority to act as judge of this culinary masterwork, planning to forward a full review to the Times, Telegraph, Washington Post and Beano.

The first impression of the restaurant’s signature dish was not favourable due to the fact that it was completely composed of vegetables. Now I am a chap who is in touch with my inner vegan so I have no particular axe to grind here but my recollection of my various visits to Texas largely revolve around large amounts of meat whether it be steaks, barbecue or Tex-Mex, so it was not a good start. The second flaw in the plan is the debate over the inclusion of courgettes, a vegetable that I cannot possibly think of a single use for unless you need something to fill an unfortunately shaped gap.

But most egregiously the overall impression was to remind me of my mum’s attempts at 1980s favourite ratatouille, which sounded dead fancy and foreign but was just whatever veg we had that went with chopped tomatoes. Actually come to think of it marketing it like that may actually appeal to the ‘vintage clothing’ (old shit we through out) wearing, wonky haired, beard oil using crowd. Put it in an inappropriate container and get it to a posh restaurant now...