Microsoft Cafe 36 is the latest Microsoft cafe to undergo renovations. It reopened a month ago. Until I visited this cafe recently to check out the new cafe, I had not been here for several years so I wanted to check out what has changed.
From my recollection, the old cafe was relatively packed together with all stations pretty much in the same area. The new cafe layout is spread out with new cafe stations placed throughout the dining room area.
The offerings at this cafe have changed quite a bit. So has the technology. The cafe is now cashless so you need to pay by card or swipe your badge if you have a cafe meal account. Like the other cafes, there are video screens at each station to indicate the status of each order.
The options available at this cafe include Indian thali meals, Mexican food, open faced sandwiches, ramen, square shaped pizza slices and teriyaki among the offerings. There is also a coffee bar in the back that serves Caffe Ladro coffee.
Like the other cafes, there are plenty of free drink dispensers available serving fruit flavored waters and iced tea. The soda dispensers are different here as they are Pepsi Spire machines instead of Coca Cola Freestyle.
Had a couple meals here and thought they were decent. Good value for the price which was just under $8 for a large bowl/plate. Ordered a miso ramen which consisted of housemade rye ramen noodles with Dungeness crab and edamame. It is light on broth, while the flavor of the noodles tasted a bit different from what I am used to.
The Indian thalis here are very big. If you order the large, you pick three items. Chose the lamb vindaloo, mango chicken and chicken tikka masala. They were a little on the saltier side, but perfectly fine otherwise. Though the piece of naan I got was not good at all. It was dry and cracker like.
If you are looking for some new meal options on the Microsoft campus, check out the newly renovated Cafe 36 to see what they have to offer. read more