The Setup: While at Peter Lougheed for the birth of our daughter, I worked up an appetite and went hunting for a burger. I mean, who knows where you might find a good burger, right? As it turned out, there are two different cafés right across from each other: The Market Café and General Café. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger at both.

Burgers: Both came on toasted buns with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and mayo. Relish, mustard and ketchup were also available in packets, but I couldn’t be bothered to add them. The Market Café’s cost: $5.55. The General Café: $5.40.

Sides: Fries and onion rings. The fries at the General’s were noted as “Gold’n Crisp Baked Fries.”

Atmosphere: A prototypical drab hospital cafeteria. The innards of the Market Café are nicer and more modern than the General’s.

Menu: For the most part, the food is not very good. I am reasonably sure there’s a plot to serve nasty food in the hospital in an effort to bring you back in again — as a patient — as soon as possible. To be fair, there are “healthful” options, but in my opinion, the right thing to do would be to revamp the whole operation altogether.

Decision: For the Market burger, the accoutrements were fine, but the bland, tasteless, skimpy patty was a giant loser. This was not a good burger. While the General’s burger was the “winner” of the two, I would not go so far as to say it was good. It had a better patty that was also pre-formed, but at the very least it had some flavour. The quarter spear of dill pickle that came with it was actually the high point of both burgers. Skip the cafeteria and eat elsewhere, wife in delivery or not.

Next week’s burger hunt will be Mercury Lounge, 101-550 17 Ave. S.W.

Please e-mail burger suggestions or recommendations to darelleats@gmail.com, or post your own opinions at ffwdweekly.com.