Microsoft Cafe 121

This is my home bulding, so I eat here a lot. I’m bummed some of or local eateries have moved out of the café, but we’re still left with some great stir-​fry, salad, mexi, phở phở, sandwiches and home cooked meals. I lean toward pulled pork taco salad or tacos. The soup is great on cool, dark days. When I want some comfort food, I’ll get the roasted turkey/​chicken, mashed potatoes and veggie.
Of courese, the commons are directly across the street, so if I have time, I’ll run over there for some fabulous Mayuri Indian nom noms. =)
BTW — the staft here rocks! Always polite, helpful and talkative.

Wait a minute, a Unilocal site for Microsoft Café? Exclusive much?
Well I cracked the system! I’m not «in the family», but I’ve eaten here and it isn’t as spectacular as you want the outsiders to think. Sure, it’s cheap. Sure, it’s well stocked. But it’s also bland and boring. So there!

This café used to be one of the best, but they got rid of Phở Cyclo and replaced it with something else that I wouldnt even call phở.

This is my favorite Microsoft café that I have discovered thus far! I work way across campus and normally need to take a shuttle to get to this side of campus, but it’s worth it! They’ve got some great looking salads and awesome phở! (For a Microsoft cafeteria). The food is all decently priced… it’s not inexpensive by any means, but it’s definitely affordable depending on what you usually eat. Side Note: The rice krispie treats here are awesome, too! It’s bigger and more spacious than most of the other cafeterias that I’ve been to. It’s a little out of the way, but a good occasional treat!

One of the better Microsoft cafeterias. At least, it’s better than 117, which is my default.
Compared to 117, there are more options at the «main entrée» station, although the choices are a bit more standard than at 117. (Which, depending on your tastes, can be good or bad.) The pizza is definitely better, as is the sandwich station. There is also a baked potato bar, which seems somewhat random. Otherwise, the rest of the cafeteria is roughly on par with 117.
However, the highlight of this cafeteria is definitely the presence of Phở Cyclo, which is a nice change from the usual cafeteria fare. They also serve the Vietnamese sandwiches, which are a bargain compared to most everything else in the cafeteria, and tasty to boot.
Note that this scale is based on the other MS cafeterias… I don’t think I’d choose to eat here over a normal restaurant.

This ain’t your Old Country Buffet or K&W Cafeteria, folks. OK, so you either have to work at Microsoft or know someone who does to gain admission, but if that’s the case, as it is for most of us, the cafeteria will not disappoint.
Let’s walk around the serving lines. Everything is bright, cheery, and clean. That’s worth a lot in my book.
First, you pass the Starbucks espresso stand. At least you know the drill there. They also have random baked goods; with only one register, the line gets pretty long here sometimes.
Inside the café’s serving room, the first station is hot entrees and rotisserie foods. The rotisserie chicken is always good and they have many creative presentations which can reduce the boredom factor. They always have some sort of stew or casserole or other hot entrée and a number of hot sides (rice, roasted potatoes, several different kinds of veggies, etc).
The next station is a chopped salad stand where they build your salad based on your directions.
Next, we have pizza slices (the bargain lunch at $ 1.90 per slice), calzones, hot Italian subs, and personal pizzettes. I wish they had thinner crusts, but the pizza is pretty good and there’s always at least five kinds to choose from. Watch for the BBQ Chicken; it’s my fave.
In the middle of the room is a huge build-​your-​own pay-​by-​the-​pound salad bar. On the other side of the salad bar is the sandwich stand, where they build custom hot or cold sandwiches from high-​quality ingredients.
Next to the pizza station is the grill. Burgers are available in regular beef, Angus beef, buffalo and salmon; grilled salmon, portabello mushrooms, chicken breasts, and other items also are available. Black bean, Boca, Gardenburger, and a few other fake burgers are available. Whole wheat and regular buns are offered for sandwiches. Curly fries, regular fries, steak fries, onion rings, and tater tots are all available; score some hot tots and wow they are good! You can put bacon, tomato, lettuce, grilled peppers/​onions, grilled mushrooms, and the rest of that stuff on your sandwich if you want.
The buffalo bacon cheeseburger rules, especially if they drop some fresh tots for you and you wait for their blazing-​hot deliciousness, but damn, this takes what seems like FOREVER to make. Even at the lunch rush, everything is custom-​cooked, which sounds like a good idea, until you discover that they ask the first two or three people what they want and then they don’t start cooking for the next people until those are ready. Sloooooooooow. If you want a burger, be ready to wait five minutes that will feel like ten while your food cooks AFTER you get to the front of the line. My advice: come at either the beginning (before 11:40) or end (after 1 or so) of the lunch rush. In between those times, you will wilt like lettuce under a heat lamp in the foot-​dragging wait.
The next station usually has a few ethnic hot sandwiches incuding a tofu/​vegetarian option. The next hot section makes Indian, Asian (various types), or Italian entrees, typically two hot entrees with rice or noodles.
Finally, the last hot station is a serve-​yourself Au Bön Pain soup/​baked potato station.
There are cold cases with yogurt, pre-​made salads, pre-​made take-​home Wolfgang Puck dinner entrees, and Odwalla drinks. There’s a Dreyers soft-​serve ice cream/​frozen yogurt macine (three ice cream flavors/​one yogurt) each day. Canned seltzer, sodas and pint-​size milk are all free.
Prices are good to fair, costing a star. Microsoft used to subsidize the cafeteria and it was more about cheaper comfort food back then; these cafes are more upscale and the prices have climbed up accordingly. Still, the range of choices is somewhat boggling if you wander in there sort of randomly hungry. Oh yeah, and they have a big dessert display too. :-)