The Stanford Faculty Club

One of the few places on campus with adult beverages!
You need to be a club member to join the festivities after a long week at work, they have buffet style dinner on Fridays. To become a club member you need to be a member of faculty/​staff and be exempt.
I went here for a 100 year celebration and it was great, they had tacos, sushi-​esq fish, deep fried ravioli, fabulous desserts (Eclaires oh my!), and not to mention delicious crab cakes plus an open bar.
All in all it was fun and I actually met the faculty member who wrote a few of the substantial Stanford history books. I would definitely come here again if they had another open event or allowed non-​exempt staff members to become part of le club.

The food is truly horrendous. The fish I had was utterly tasteless, nothing had any spicing/​flavor whatsoever, and the cupcake-​like dessert was totally dry. The service was good and the setting is ideal, but the food makes this place not worth visiting. The student union next door literally has better food than the Stanford Faculty Club.
If this is the reward for earning a spot on the Stanford Faculty, I think I’d rather head somewhere else.

My wife and I had our wedding here, and were very happy with it. We contacted them about 2 months in advance, and Diane Elcan, who’s their director of catering, was extremely responsive and helpful. We were very happy with the location and the set up (we had the ceremony outside and the reception inside, in their Gold Room). The menu was great, and everyone liked their food, and the staff were very helpful and attentive. The whole thing went perfectly, and made it entirely stress free. Highly recommended.

If your kid asks why they need school, what’s the point of higher education and why work toward a top-​notch university, take them to The Stanford Faculty Club. This place is saweeet! I’ve had the fortune of attending a few events at The Stanford Faculty Club and it’s an impressive venue — nice space, great service and good food. Does anyone know where I can get a counterfeit Stanford faculty ID? 4.25 solid stars.

Beautiful venue
I’ve attended quite a few Stanford Breakfast Briefs at the Faculty Club and it is always an excellent experience.
The venue is gorgeous – facing the campus, its always nice to watch the students passing by. Its got huge windows so you feel like you’re both inside and outside at the same time. The food they serve is always excellent and I love that they always have some fruits (for us healthy eaters ;) hahaha)
#Yelp100Challenge

Tasty lunch buffets

Cool space and very good buffet– the salad bar selections and salmon were excellent!

I think every Stanford grad student JUMPS at the chance to eat at the Faculty Club.
And it’s not just because it’s free lunch; we get plenty of those as it is.
Of course, it’s partly the chance to meet with some distinguished visitor, some star in your discipline whom you’ve been reading ever since you accessed JSTOR for the first time. But it’s also the dreams of the buffet ahead of you: the numerous salad options, the daily specials: usually one or two grain-​based or pasta salads, the roasted veggies, the fish and the meat, the soup options… Last time, they had an amazing farro-​pea-​asparagus-​feta salad. I had more helpings than I ever hoped to be seen eating in public.
The desserts are usually somewhat lacking: they’ll have fresh bowls of strawberries with homemade ice cream, and it’s best to stick with that. I’ve found their bread pudding somewhat chewy, and their cookies often disappointing.
That being said, it’s kind of nice to go for a classy lunch and not feel compelled to stuff yourself with some extremely rich dessert you know you’ll never be able to recreate in your own kitchen ever again.
Better to stuff yourself with the entrees and sides. Don’t stop til you get enough.

I’ve been to the Stanford Faculty Club several times for various events (never having to pay). The setting and décor definitely exudes «faculty club». The plaques and pictures make it clear that this place has been around for a long time and has had many famous people walk through it.
The food there is decent. From what I hear, it’s very expensive per head. The appetizers were good — I enjoyed the samosas and the egg rolls. The spinach salad was okay — there was a lot of spinach and not much else, which made for a very boring salad. The chicken entrée was bland. However, the chocolate lava cake was quite delicious. The service is very professional, and it’s a good place for official events if you have money to burn. The setting makes you feel very academic and intellectual.

My husband and I just had our wedding at the Stanford Faculty club in August. We wanted an outdoor, garden-​themed wedding ceremony, with an indoor reception. We wanted the location to be convenient to our family and friends who live in the Bay Area. Most of the places we looked at had incredibly expensive facility rental fees, or could only accommodate us until 10pm, or were up a windy hill, or required that we do the reception somewhere else. Gustavo is a Stanford Alum (although you don’t need to be an alum to use their club), so this was the perfect place for us. Hilary helped us plan the ceremony and reception with the help of our day coordinator. She was great to work with– very professional and prompt at responding to emails/​calls. She helped us find some of our vendors (ie. lighting, AV, florist, cake). On the day of the wedding, everything looked great! Our guests commented how delicious they thought everything tasted. There was plenty of appetizers and cocktails, and wine/​beer/​soda with the Cardinal package. We would both recommend this venue highly.
(note: we are not reviewing the hotel rooms, because we ended up using a different hotel)
In summary… Pros: great value, centrally located, very accessible, quiet, private location, delicious food, great staff, helpful events coordinator, opportunities to take beautiful photos all over campus. Cons: it’s not looking over the ocean (duh), nor is it Villa Montalvo or Allied Art Guild.

I came to the Stanford faculty center for a wedding. The venue is lovely and large and accommodates a good number of people. The service I attended was lovely and the venue itself is well put together. There’s nothing more I could ask for from a reception hall: a stage and dance floor. The food was only okay the steak was undercooked and made some members of my party sick.
The court yard just outside the hall is very nice for appetizers.
I appreciated the wait staff being as accommodating as they were. The ladies room is a bit out of the way but still intuitively placed. It has large mirrors that are perfect for a good pow wow. Overall, good spot for a formal party.

We just had our wedding (both ceremony and reception) at the Faculty Club and could not have been happier with the venue and catering. The staff, including Hilary and Ken as well as everyone else we interacted with on the day of the wedding, were consistently warm, professional, and a pleasure to work with. As far as I could tell, they worked extremely well with all our other vendors. The main dining hall space is a good size, and elegant with a lot of potential — we did put some effort into lighting and decorating the room, but it looked absolutely magical when it was done. We also liked having all the different rooms in the Club, several of which we used as changing rooms, babysitting rooms, etc — we also used the Red and Gold rooms for a cocktail reception. Overall it was a great experience and I am very glad our wedding was here.
Also, we stayed in one of the hotel rooms the night of the wedding. There are just a few rooms and I fully understand the drawbacks of not having a full-​service hotel with staff there on weekends, etc. That said, the room was clean, spacious, and comfortable, there were no issues with noise or anything else, and all in all it was exactly what we expected and hoped.

I’ve stayed at road-​side hotels that have better service and amenities. I had a HORRID stay at Stanford’s Faculty Club and have still not been able to get a returned phone call of concern for my troubles.
The staff were incredibly rude and unhelpful — especially the woman who does catering.
When I asked a simple question, «Is there a microwave that I can use on the premises?»…I was told to upgrade my room ($ 149.00) in order to have access to a microwave. I then asked if there was a microwave in their vast kitchen (which feeds hundreds per day) and was told «no.» I later went down to the kitchen myself and was promptly shown the microwave by the kitchen staff… who were exceedingly helpful.
When I asked for more decaf coffee pouches in my room, the housekeeping said they didn’t have any. Then, she rifled through some old boxes and found ONE packet and some old creamers… no thanks.
The Club boasts complimentary waters and sodas in your room fridge, but they never replenished my waters and they only offered sugared soda. (Sprite)
There was an incessant «knocking» through the wall of my room that seemed associated with the water pressure or water heater system.
There is no staff present on weekends; therefore, no help for these issues if you stay over the weekend.
On one particular evening, there was a drumming festival a half mile down the road. I went down to ask if they could be more quiet as I was teaching a class the next morning. They told me that the drumming and prayers/​singing (amplified by sound system) would continue until Midnight. I had to find another place to stay for that night as I could not sleep. I left a message for the staff overnight so that they would receive my complaint the next business day (Monday morning). The staff neither called me, apologized or acknowledged that there had been a problem at all. It has been a full week and I cannot get a return phone call.
My advice is to spend less money and go to the Westin where they have amazingly comfortable beds, multi-​head showers and Starbucks in your room. ($ 139.00 per night)

Too bad you have to be a faculty member (or a prof’s tagalong) to eat here, since the daily buffet was actually really good. Five-​spice duck was definitely the highlight and I had an embarrassing pile of that. Really fresh variety of salads.
Amazing dessert spread too. Ice cream with plenty of strawberries, bread pudding, crème brûlée (though this looked a little dry), cookies, upside-​down pineapple cake… mm. Bizarro that these are not counted as part of the buffet and one of the waitstaff followed us all back and eyeballed our sweet heaps to see how much to charge our professor host.

«The Stanford Faculty Club is a private membership organization comprised of active and retired Stanford faculty and senior staff.»
I’ve been the the Stanford Faculty Club for various staff/​faculty events and I must say that it is one of my favorite places on the Stanford campus. The daily buffet is delicious with a large selection of pastas, pizzas, salads and daily specials such as roasted chicken, bluenose sea bass.
The dessert section of the buffet is to die for. Crème brûlée, decadent rasberry and chocolate cakes, soufflés, ice cream… etc.
They also have an À la carte menu with great sandwich choices.
Too bad this is only open to staff and faculty!