70,686 Square Miles of Delicious

photo from Brett L.

Hello FewdBlawgers, I'm excited to join your ranks. I know my old personal blog never really got off its feet, but Mingerspice thinks I'll be a better blogger in this, a communal blog setting, and with the shared passion for the subject. We'll see.

Anyway, much is known about the unrivaled culinary Xanadu that is Google. In addition to Google's great stock options, Google employees receive a slew of benefits from laundry rooms to concierge services. They even have a ball-pit (like at Chuck E. Cheese), but the perk that I am certainly the most jealous of is their famously good food prepared fresh by their very talented chefs. My boyfriend has worked there for the past 8 or 9 months and is constantly making me green with envy as he rattles off lunch after lunch that makes my company's cafeteria food seem like pig slop. Actually,... it sounds head and shoulders above many of the restaurants that I frequent. And to add insult to injury, it's free! He probably wouldn't come home for dinner, if I didn't like food as much as I do (though I hear the dinners there aren't quite as good as the lunches). He'd probably grab a to-go box and eat dinner on the free shuttle that drives him home every day. No, I'm not bitter at all.

He's actually quite sheepish in reporting the amazing lunches that he's always having, careful to let me know about those rare cases where the food is only tasty and not exquisite. And he invites me to have lunch with him constantly. So yesterday I finally took him up on the offer. Why did I wait so long? Well, partly it's because I only drive to work very rarely. (Normally I take the train. BTW, today is a "Spare The Air" day!) And the other reason is that Google seems a bit far, and while, my office is pretty flexible on the whole "working hours" thing, I'm enough of a slacker that I don't want to seem like I'm always taking a long lunch hour. The good news is that it only took me 14 minutes to drive to Google, so the time pressure thing isn't really that big of an issue.


Cut to the chow:

Dave and I ate at Cafe 150. The name comes from the fact that everything served there is grown within 150 miles of the cafeteria. Yay local produce! I tried to load my plate with as many different things as I could in order to sample from the entire cornucopia of goodness that was there. I tried the trout almondine, the meatloaf, the root vegetable pot pie, the green beans, the broccoli carrot salad, the chicken salad, the mashed potatoes, and the vanilla-macerated strawberries and peaches. (Sadly even tiny portions of many things add up to a full plate very quickly. I think if I worked there I would have to check the menu before lunch just to make sure I didn't miss some gem that was hidden among all the other tasty things, which might finally be encountered with a full plate. Well, I guess it's all free, but I'd feel guilty about wasting good food... or gorging myself which is what I'm sure I'd actually end up doing.)

How was it you ask? AMAZING! The trout almondine was so succulent that I nearly started drooling just now thinking back on it. It was tender and rich and fresh tasting. Not the least bit over- or undercooked. And certainly not at all dry the way one might expect fish sitting in a cafeteria setting to become. (They serve relatively small plates of each dish at the counter which have a very quick turn over.) The green beans stood on their own, a dish of simplicity and a testament to the freshness of the cafe's ingredients. I was a tiny bit skeptical picking up the root vegetable pot pie. When I saw a Googler pass me holding a pot pie I knew I must have one, but I did not expect to find them hidden over at the vegetarian station, and I certainly wasn't expecting to have to exchange my visions of gravy smothered chicken for gravy smothered turnips. However, despite my disappointment at finding the dish was meatless, I'm glad I picked it up anyway. It was quite possibly the best amalgamation of root-vegetable flavors I have ever had, and I will certainly attempt to recreate its earthy goodness at home, with my Eatwell Farms Tokyo white turnips in the near future.

I took the chicken salad, which I don't normally like, because it looked rather different than any chicken salad that I had ever tried. The difference being that it had quite a lot more chicken than normal and it was really more of a main dish than a side. Lightly dressed with just enough mayonnaise to turn up the richness of the chicken and a few little bits of things to give it crunch, it was clearly the dish that my mom's chicken salad hopes that it might one day grow up to be. (Sorry mom, you know I adore almost everything else you make.)

They used a very brilliantly yellow carrot in the broccoli carrot salad, which made it beautiful on the plate (hardly any onion too, which was good). The mashers were also quality. The only thing that was a bit of a let down was the meatloaf. Its flavor packed quite a punch, but the texture wasn't quite there. It was a little too fine and homogenous and not really meaty enough. I suppose if I had had it in another context I wouldn't have had reason to complain, but in the middle of all the other fantastic dishes, I found it a bit lacking.

Not usually one for desserts, I went for the fruitier of the two, expecting the local produce to win out over the more processed Carrot Cake, and I'm glad I did (though Dave reports that the Carrot Cake was not to be trifled with... get it? "Trifled?") A minimal amount of fruit and cream atop a faintly sweet and rather crumbly biscuit was the perfect little ending to a wonderful meal.

So the upshot of all this is that I now know exactly what I'm missing when my boyfriend tells me how amazing his lunches are. But I also know that I'll be heading out there to eat at Cafe 150 again soon.

(Sorry I didn't bring my own camera, guys. I'll try to next time. Check out Brett L.'s Flickr page for pictures of more googlefood. The presentation is not amazing, but you'll at least get an idea.)


Here's the entire menu for the day at Cafe 150 (is there a way to hide part of the post from someone who is just a casual reader like you can on LJ?):
Vegetarian
**Tofu Lentil Loaf
Tofu and brown lentils blended with onions, celery, carrots and oats topped with toasted almonds served with mushroom gravy
*Root Vegetable Pot Pie
Golden turnips, celery root, carrots and onions stewed, topped with puff pastry and baked till golden brown
Sides
**Steamed broccoli
Main Course
Classic Meatloaf
Ground beef, veal and pork with onions, celery, tomato paste, eggs, bread crumbs baked and served with mushroom gravy
Open-faced Turkey Sandwich
Free-range turkey breast roasted, served on a slice of bread with mashed potatoes and gravy
Trout Almondine
Fresh rainbow trout stuffed with lemons, pan roasted and served with a toasted almond-parsley brown butter
Sides
*Mashers
**Green Beans
Tossed to Order Salads
Fill out a Ticket
Composed Salads
**Zucchini Corn Salad
Fresh zucchini and corn tossed with lemon juice, onions,
parsley, red bells, pine nuts and olive oil.
*Broccoli Carrot Salad
Fresh broccoli and baby carrots tossed with a julienne
red onions and apple-honey mustard vinaigrette.
Chicken Salad
Grilled Chicken tossed with celery, onions, thyme, carrots, mayonnaise, mustard and walnuts.
Soups
*Creamy Broccoli
Organic broccoli, yellow onion, shallots, cream sherry, white wine, cream, lemon zest
Beef and Torpedo Onions
Grilled hanger steak with red wine, reduced balsamic vinegar, red torpedo onions, veal stock
Desserts
Carrot Cake
w/ toasted walnuts, pineapple & white chocolate cream cheese frosting
Vanilla-Macerated Strawberries and Peaches
Served with a light and airy vanilla biscuit

Read more!