Greenhouse Cafe

i’ve only eaten there once. Yes, it is expensive to pay $.58 an ounce. I could’ve tried a seven dollars rice bowl at ban me truck outside. instead I paid $ 12 to feed me, a 105 pound 21 year old. but I’m glad I went here, because the buffet format is awesome. You actually get to see what you’re getting before you order it. Compared to this, my schools cafeteria is a desert of vegetarian and vegan options. And at most food trucks, unless I order a salad, I probably won’t get enough vegetables. Here I get to choose the composition of my meal with a precision rarely found elsewhere.

Because I’ve been eating here around once a week for the past 6 months, I felt like it was finally time to leave a review. The food is generally overpriced and underwhelming, compared to the food truck options usually available in front of the Science Center. You’ll pay $ 4 for a small salad, and $ 8+ for most meals. The Indian food by the ounce is a doozy…
That said, there are a few staff members who provide excellent service– and absolutely make my day, every day. These staffers tend to be working as baristas on the Greenhouse Café coffee area– which serves Starbucks coffee & (almost) all Starbucks beverages are available, and prepares them just like they should. If this review were for the coffeeshop alone, it would be five stars! They just started serving DELICIOUS hot apple cider, which if you can tolerate the sugar high, is good til the last drop.
Helpful hint: Bring your own travel mug, and the purchase of *any* size coffee will $ 1.25 (might be slightly more for non-​students)! This is really a life-​saver if you are a frequent caffeinator.

The novelty factor of eating on «Harvard» campus definitely plays here, but the real shining star was the Mexican meal we got on our recent visit to the world famous campus. We had pulled pork, beans, rice and cheese, and not only was it absolutely delicious, but it was big enough to feed both of us. I wish I had a place like this at my school.

This review is of the Lemongrass Thai «buffet» station inside the Greenhouse Café. Don’t go there. It’s bland matter that serves little purpose except to sit in your stomach until dinnertime. Snag a friend and stand in line at the food trucks located in various spots around campus.
Once upon a time the Lemongrass buffet was an Indian buffet, but in the last four months, I have not seen the cuisine — nor the items — change at all. At 49 cents an ounce, it’s always the same four dishes — red curry [meat/​fish], Thai bbq chicken, vegetables with garlic, and stir-​fried noodles. You can put these over steamed rice. Sometimes the red curry animal protein sitting in sauce is improperly labeled and you can’t tell if it’s chicken or fish until you bite into it. Considering there are only a total of five items ever offered, how is it possible to get the labels wrong? All of the dishes seem to be cooked in the same oil, so the chicken and noodles always taste fishy.
I don’t have a sophisticated palate, and I am usually two buildings away around noontime, so I visit this buffet to quell hunger pangs. The saving grace is the condiments — soy sauce with scallions, pickled carrots, pickled cucumbers (labeled «cucumber salad»), chopped cilantro, and one other condiment I never bother getting. Cleverly located next to the recycled napkins and biodegradable cutlery, they keep the food from tasting like fishy wet newspaper.
I filled my compostable container with some rice, Thai bbq chicken (I wasn’t sure about the other curry dish — it looked like chicken and disintegrated like fish), and noodles, stepped to the cash register right next to the buffet station, and then thought I’d sprinkle some cilantro on my food for flavor.
As I picked up a few cilantro leaves with the pinchers, the food service personnel manning the counter barked, «Did you pay?»
I told him, yes, I did.
«You have to pay for them!» he declared, sweeping his hand over the condiments and the dishes. «They are all part of the same thing!»
I held up the leaves and asked, «So I can’t put these on?»
«These condiments aren’t free, that is my point!»
I shrugged and moved toward the free napkins and cutlery as the cashiers laughed at the food service man, who exasperatedly responded, «I see them doing it EVERY DAY!»
Well, that’s the last time I’ll buy Thai from him. Not that it matters — he gets paid the same regardless. Adding a pinch of cilantro to my purchased food might well have tipped the scales to another ounce for 49 cents more. I’m sure a greater number of leaves gets thrown in the garbage at the end of each day, or week, or whenever they refresh the condiments. Sounds like small beans, but it’s the PRINCIPLE of the matter, right?
I’ve learned my lesson: No more fishy wet newspaper. Thanks, Grinch. You get two stars. Merry Christmas.

Pizza is good. That’s about all. Seriously, everything else is a don’t bother for me.
The lines can be very long and there is hardly a seat to be had at peak times.

Lovely, pleasant, fast, convenient, and many options. Deserves a much higher Unilocal rating!
Has TONS of vegan options: soymilk for coffee, soy frappuchinos, vegetable burritos, vegetarian sushi, tofu soup, and more.
Good place to do homework, eat, and hang out.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Well, obviously I’m the fool as this is the second time I stupidly enter this horrendous place where bad quality food goes to die. My first encounter was with a small plate of odd tasting and poorly made veggie sushi at the bargain price of $ 9.50 — with student discount! ‘Never again!’ I remember saying while throwing out the awful sushi in the trash where it belonged.
.well, apparently today was ‘never’. Exhausted after hours of studying in the library and unwilling to vendor a food voyage in the rain, I convinced myself that everyone deserved a second chance.
Guess what? They don’t.
I’m halfway through a bitter, old, soggy veggie wrap wishing I’d endured rain and bought edible food.
Disgust is a positive description of how I feel about the food in the Greenhouse Café.
Oddly enough, the staff is one if the most friendly crowd I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. It doesn’t make sense. But anyway, since the coffee is Starbucks and OK and I made friends with the peeps, this has become my go-​to coffee joint.

Oh, Greenhouse Café — why do you pretend to be more than a pizza or coffee joint?
The reason you have so many customers is not related to the quality or variety of your food offerings. You have thousands of customers because you are located in one of the busiest and most central buildings on campus. You have thousands of customers because you exist amidst a community who *need* caffeine and sustenance 24hrs a day. You are overrun with students because you have so many tables available next to power outlets; you are a library with snacks!
I cannot give you just one star, though, because your staff are lovely. They deal with the masses each day but still find time too smile. They try to make the Indian food buffet appetizing, even though it’s rubbish.
I have one tip for you: stop selling your flavourless, unidentifiable and plastic-​looking sushi. It was prepacked many miles away and does nothing for you, nothing for me, nothing for the so-​called fish inside it.
If you’re looking for an inexpensive snack at any time of the day, regardless of nutritional value, the Greenhouse Café is ideally situated to help you. Be careful of the coffee line out front — it’s often quicker to go INSIDE the Café.

Bad food, poor vegetarian choices and expensive. Thanks for giving me another incentive to pack my lunch though!

I echo everything Max K. has said, but should add a few other notes.
There is a smoothie/​bubble tea station that opens at 11am. Beware of the bubble tea: it is made with (cheap-​tasting) powder and is way too sweet and artificial-​tasting. If the bright pink (strawberry) and bright green (green tea) color doesn’t already scare you away, the powder-​driven taste will.
The smoothies are slightly better than the bubble tea, but depends on which you order. There is a mix of berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries?) that is perhaps the worst attempt at a smoothie I’ve ever tasted. While gritty because of all the small seeds of the fruit, it was bitter; the fruit tasted as if it had been frozen (a real possibility). My favorite smoothie (which won’t say much) is the orange juice + honey + peach + mango one (there’s a variation with soymilk in it as well). Since the fruit itself isn’t sweet, the orange juice adds the necessary kick to make me identify my drink as a smoothie.
Beware of the coffee here, which is «Starbucks» but tastes nothing like what you get in the real Starbucks coffeeshops.
Generally, a hit or miss depending on what you’re looking for. The Indian food, seaweed salad, and smoothies have often made for good makeshift lunches when I’m on the run and happen to be in the area. But I avoid this place unless I happen to be in the immediate area and super super hungry.

Inside Harvard’s science center, the Greenhouse might serve as a good place for visitors to get a taste of a certain slice of Harvard life: it’s cramped and often packed with student noshing alone (but taking whole tables) while studying. What the options lack in depth they make up for in range: greasy pizza, greasy burgers, greasy burritos, decent Indian options, a salad bar of dining-​hall mediocrity, packaged sushi. My standby for value and quality is the prepackaged seaweed salad.
The place is mostly frequented by students trying to spend down their boardplus (flexible dining points) and academics who work in the (awfully ugly and enormous) building. But, if you’re touring the campus it might be a useful resource for either a quick bite or for its Starbucks coffee. The café links to a courtyard, which gives a view of the building which has been described as making it look most like an outerspace base. In warmer weather, it’s a pleasant place to sit and preferable to the cramped interior.