Café On One

ZERO STARS!!! Just ate lunch at this total dump. It’s over priced slop. Had a Reuben panini (kosher style Italian food I guess) and it was terrible. The toasted bread was soggy and the meat tasted nothing like corned beef. My wife’s ham and cheese panini tasted like a cardboard sandwich. I think whatever deli meat they are using is left over from the carcasses on display at the museum. It’s a cafeteria style place so don’t let anyone fool you into thinking it’s a «café». The panini are prepared in advance and are just tossed on to paper plates when ordered. Sandwiches come with some mixed greens and carrots that taste old and mildewed. They just throw on a little dab of vinagerette… No choice of dressing offered. So 2 sandwiches and one plastic bottle of iced tea came to over $ 27. But you do get to taste some fine taxidermied carcass meat for the price. Save yourself… Stay away… Very far away.

Der Food Court im Museum of Natural History hat das schlechteste Preis-​Leistungs-​Verhältnis, das ich in New York City bisher gesehen habe…

Terrible. Foods over priced, tastes bad, dirty seating area. I can’t understand how the museum is ok with this.

This review is for the food court at the American Museum of Natural History. I will write a separate review for the museum itself (which definitely warrants much higher reviews).
Terrible food and terrible service. Avoid this place at all costs. We didn’t know any better and expected that for such high prices, we would actually get something of quality. Boy were we mistaken.
We actually really wanted dino nuggets. (I mean, c’mon, how awesome do dino nuggets sound, right??) I asked the server behind the counter if they had any dino nuggets ready (they had a sign saying they serve dino nuggets) and he kept saying: «we don’t have any right now.» I told him that I understood that but asked when they would be ready, to which he once again replied: «we don’t have any right now.» And I said «will you have any at all today?» and he again replied «we don’t have any right now.» It felt like I was talking to a robot. That is not how a customer should be treated, especially not in a place where these people have experience serving thousands of customers a day.
I ordered a plate of BBQ chicken, potatoes, mac & cheese, beans, corn, and a dinner roll. The food tasted old, the BBQ chicken was extremely dry, and the corn (how can you go wrong with corn??) was mushy! And I paid $ 13 for my entire meal. They don’t even have water bottles! Instead, you must get water in an extremely small dixie cup… we ended up using 15 dixie cups for water. How is this being «green» and supporting the environment? Oh, and their chicken nuggets are EXTREMELY dry!
The food is mass-​produced, generic, bland-​tasting, and borderline inedible. We both left feeling dissatisfied and slightly nauseated, and together, the two of us paid $ 30 for our meal. With that amount of money, one could get a nice, fresh, quality meal elsewhere.
These people are serving thousands of customers a day. I expected more from the Natural History Museum food court, especially given that they espouse the ideals of conservation. Should they not have more organic food? All I got out of my experience was mass-​produced, cafeteria style, unhealthy food.
Never again!

This is the worst meal I’ve had in a very long time, which considering the quality of my own cooking is saying a lot. Eating at this place is a little bit like wolfing down gruel in a barn. Except instead of being surrounded by cute animals you have the less-​cute animals of little kids screaming and tourists yelling in foreign tongues.
This place has many more options than anticipated — pizza, hot dogs, chicken strips, make-​your-​own tacos, BBQ chicken, cupcakes, macaroni and cheese, ice cream — the list goes on. With a menu like that what could be bad about it?
I don’t know how this cafeteria managed to screw up everything thing possible, but they did. Maybe there’s a medal on Unilocal for so consistently ruining simple food choices. The tacos were terrible, from the water-​ey guacamole to the cold, chewy tortilla. Chicken was dry and chewy, the beans were dry and pasty. Was finished after my first one.
The chicken strips were similarly bad. They had ample breading that wasn’t quite fried enough, but pretty mushy and soggy. It was actually juicier than the chicken itself, with bits of flour flaking off in your mouth. Couldn’t finish that either.
I did get some roasted potatoes. Those were decent, actually the best thing I had from there. Which was sad, considering those three things clocked out at $ 17 — without a drink.
The bar is charged at a generous $ 12/​lb. If you don’t want to constantly refill water from paper shot glasses or get an 6−8oz container of milk expect to pay at least $ 3 – 4 for your drink.

We had lunch here today. It’s cafeteria style, order at the counter and then find a table. Alan had a grilled chicken sandwich, which came w/​a side salad and I had a cheese plate, which came w/​3 large wedges of cheese, a couple of slices of a dense raisin bread and an assortment of fresh and dried fruits. It was good, but would have been terrific if the cheeses were what are listed in the online menu, a Vermont Cheddar, a Maytag Blue and a Coach Farm goat cheese. Instead, the selections were bland and blander, a very mild cheddar, a dill havarti (I’m guessing) and a white cheese of no particular distinction, maybe a jack. The dried fruit was apricots and cranberries and the fresh fruit was grapes and strawberries. The grapes, apricots and cranberries were delicious. The strawberries, not so much. The bread was very good w/​the cheeses. The cheddar was the best of the lot, but that’s not saying much. It could have been so much better. Alan liked his sandwich and salad OK. We drank water. By the time we finished lunch the line was out the door.