Hospital food is the butt of all kinds of jokes. It’s probably even lower on the hierarchy of gourmet cooking than airline food. That’s starting to change, though. Especially at world-leading hospitals like San Francisco’s UCSF, food is increasingly considered a form of medicine and is given just as much attention as any other part of the healing process.
The result is that — despite being served in a hospital — much of the food at UCSF is fantastic. In fact, you can find one of the best burgers in the Bay Area there.
The rise of the gourmet hospital cafeteria
Before you crucify me for that particular take, let me share some history. Back in the ‘90s, hospital food was either institutional-grade garbage or something that hospitals contracted to outside companies. Where I grew up in Philadelphia, the local hospital had a McDonald’s on-site. I love McDonald’s, but I wouldn’t argue that it’s something compatible with optimum health.
As increasingly health-conscious consumers started to realize that whole food, organic foods, and plant-based items were an essential part of maintaining health, the fact that hospitals still served frozen, sodium-and-fat-laden processed food started to seem increasingly unsupportable. That began a movement to turn hospital food into part of the healing process, instead of an embarrassment that potentially made sick patients even sicker.
The hospital started to hire Michelin-starred chefs as advisers, revamping their menus to add in dishes that integrated fresh, healthy ingredients as well as dishes from a variety of national origins. They also began to introduce vegan, vegetarian, kosher, and other special food types to their menus. Sugary drinks got nixed from the menu in favor of bubbly water and artisan smoothies.
Gourmet food at UCSF
Like so much else in the food world, San Francisco has been at the vanguard of this movement. The Bay Area’s University of California San Francisco (UCSF) hospital group, which is one of the best hospital systems in the world, built its menus from the ground up to emphasize fresh, healthy food. Whereas before many hospitals served frozen or heavily-processed food, UCSF makes most of its food fresh, with an emphasis on sustainability and what the hospital calls “Roots and Shoots”, or plant-based items. They’ve also incorporated dishes from a variety of the Bay Area’s diverse cultures.
The end result is a menu that features tons of healthy, delicious food. Before, ordering salmon at the hospital would’ve been akin to getting lobster at a diner. Now, though, it’s a totally reasonable and delicious choice, at least here in our fair city.
Some of this change is driven by a desire to feed patients better, but some of it also comes from the needs of staff. Busy doctors and nurses often eat at the hospital cafeteria alongside their patients. Given their heroic sacrifices during the pandemic (and before as well), it feels like it would be wrong to make them drink rehydrated concentrated apple juice and slurp down questionably edible jello or mystery meat.
That UCSF burger, though
All that brings me to UCSF’s burgers. The hospital group wanted to use its burgers — a popular menu item — as a way to showcase its healthy, sustainable food initiatives. To that end, UCSF’s chefs did several things. Firstly, they made their burgers with Niman Ranch beef, which is grown on small family farms and made from cows that range on pastures before their meat is grain-finished with a 100% vegetarian diet. It’s Certified Humane and is the beef of choice for many fancy burger joints and steakhouses.
UCSF then embraced two popular burger trends: smashing and blending. With smashing, patties are hand-formed and then individually “smashed” on a hot griddle, creating a patty that’s thin, cooks quickly without the outside drying out, and is very flavorful due to increased browning. UCSF’s chefs also embraced blending, adding carefully-selected mushrooms directly to their burger meat.
To get the blend right, UCSF’s chefs served their burgers to over 3,000 taste testers, tweaking the mixture until it was perfect. Done right, a blended burger integrates plant-based protein via the added mushrooms but does it in a way that enhances the umami flavor of the meat so much that most people would have no idea it contains anything but beef. UCSF did this both to build a tasty burger and to add in more non-meat components. Chef Chuck Davies told Food Management, a trade journal, “It’s the protein-flip principle, where we are making veggies more center of the plate and good quality meat more on the side.” To top it all off — literally — UCSF decided to serve their burger on a pretzel bun. When they made the switch to this bun instead of a traditional wheat alternative, sales reportedly jumped 75%.
I’m not surprised; UCSF’s burger is — honestly — fabulous.
The smashed patty, cooked from fresh meat and made to order, is thin and juicy, and the blended mushrooms give it a deep, powerful umami flavor. Mushrooms contain a ton of glutamate, which enhances other flavors. Here, they take the already-delicious Niman Ranch beef and bump it up to a whole other universe, while also making the burger 30% plant-based and thus healthier and more sustainable.
Add to that the pretzel bun — which in keeping with UCSF’s nutritional philosophies is fresh and not too salty — and this is one of the best burgers in the Bay Area. If you served one to me on the menu of a fancy Berkeley eatery, I would definitely come back and order it again and again. The fact that it comes out of the hospital cafeteria makes this burger even more strangely remarkable.
Yes, burgers are not necessarily as healthy of a choice as some of the other things on UCSF’s menu, like its salads. But if you find yourself in need of UCSF’s services or otherwise have a reason to eat at the hospital — as I recently did — you’re not always looking for something leafy and green. Sometimes, healing through food is about embracing comfort food like a great burger — albeit comfort food that’s done incredibly well and uses wholesome, humane, and sustainable ingredients.
Burgers and the Bay
The catch, of course, is that during Covid-19, you can’t get anywhere near a hospital unless you have a bona fide reason to be there. That means UCSF’s burger is also one of the most exclusive in town. You can’t just waltz in off the street and order one. In fact, I hope that you don’t have an occasion to try one for a very long time. If you do, though, you’ll be amazed by what UCSF’s chefs have accomplished by applying the institution’s own nutritional philosophies, and likely shocked that something so yummy comes out of the commercial kitchen of a giant hospital.
Ultimately, UCSF’s delicious burger epitomizes what I love about the Bay Area’s food scene. Yes, we have the fanciest, most innovative restaurants in the world, from the French laundry to Chez Panisse. But even more than that, a culture of fresh, wholesome, well-prepared food pervades every aspect of our region. It’s one of the things that makes living in the Bay Area so special.
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Our food culture is so strong here by the Bay that you can find amazing food in a little hole-in-the-wall joint off the highway, from a food truck at a gas station, or even (gasp!) at a hospital.
