Harvard Cafe

Closed — not a review per se, but I need to update their page. This place has been closed for a while now.
Oh, how i miss Lee’s Sandwich Shop’s burgers and fries.

CLOSED the bad food caught up with it, I do miss the staff though, they were always freindly to me, and some of them worked there when it was lees. Oh well. Failing food = Failing business

Really terrible. $ 7.50 for a sandwich isn’t a bargain. And the meats were cheap, basic, and tasteless. The bread was a boring, bland white sub roll. The service was extremely minimal – nothing particularly friendly or good about it. The décor is outdated and uninteresting. I really didn’t have a good experience here and would recommend against it.

Possibly the nastiest chicken salad sandwich I’ve ever had. I had my coworker try it just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. We both threw up about 15 minutes after eating it.
Add that to the fact that just about everywhere on the ceiling was leaking. I’m talking puddles on the floor, collection buckets overflowing, water dripping and splashing on the counter into people’s food.
Just awful.

GO HERE FOR BREAKFAST.
Everyone complaining about the lunch here is inherently off-​base. You go here for cheap, quick, good breakfast. Hungover on a Sunday? Roll in at 12, they make breakfast all day.
It’s hard to mess up eggs, homefries, toast and coffee.
Looking for a NYC-​style diner in Harvard Sq? Go here.

After an afternoon of wondering the Harvard campus (i was visiting from California) i got a little hungry. I found myslef near a little spot called Harvard Café.
It’s a small but long space inside. In the front are tables and chairs with a take out counter for your eat and run bites. I sat on the long bar counter and ordered a hot pastrami sandwich.
I think the place is rather expensive for what it is. The sandwich was decent, but i could have gotten the same thing back in CA for a couple dollars less. But i guess thats the price you pay for having to ship most things to your location.
The experience was a bit odd. While the wait staff was sweet, i could not understand half of what they were asking me. When i ordered a pastrami, she asked me if i wanted onions. I just said no. So instead, initially recieved a sandwich with just bread and pastrami. When i asked if nothing else came with it, she said i said no. But apparently she thought i meant no to everything when i only remember saying no to onions. She took it back and added lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and, yes, onions.
Overall, not a bad place. And i dont give them three stars for the service. They were sweet and it was no big deal in the end. However, you cant ignore that there is nothign special about the place and the fact i find their food to be overpriced.
Nevetheless, it was still a good sandwich.

FYI — This place is indeed under new ownership. A few of the staff members are the same but most have left. The previous owners have opened up a cool new place called Lee’s Burgers in Newton, MA (216 Sumner Street) on the corner next to what used to be Coldstone’s. Not as close to the city but awesome burgers if you are in the area.

When I entered this no-​frills diner style sandwich shop, my hopes were not high. I mean, I basically had no expectations. And yet — and yet! — I still ended up disappointed.
Paid $ 3.50 for a cup of chicken noodle soup that, although it had a unique chicken flavor, was waaaaaay over-​salted and over-​peppered, and was originally ice cold. The guy behind the counter then microwaved it for about three minutes and served it to me boiling, noodles slopping over the sides of the cup.
After I picked out the noodles and left the peppery broth, ordered a $ 3.50 side of fries. And guys. Guys. I’m a pretty big dude and have never been known to let a plate of even very mediocre fries go uneaten. When these bad boys came out? I ate exactly four, then pushed the full plate away. They were utterly repulsive. Insipid frozen fries, unseasoned (not even any salt), totally undercooked. And there was some undefinable nasty funk to the puddles of grease that were on top of them. I’m guessing the deep fryer was mega overdue for an oil change.
If it weren’t such a mom and pop establishment, I would have asked for my money back in a heartbeat. As it was, I ended up shelling out $ 10 for a few noodles, four horrible fries and a flat Diet Coke. The only reason I’m giving them two stars instead of one is that they had a functioning heater.

I did not know who Lee was, but all things considering, this replacement was worthy. The sandwiches are not cheap. It’s 6 – 7 bucks for a very simple, diner style sub or sandwich with non-​fussy breads (no foccacia or artisan for you) and non-​fussy ingredients (pickles, tomatoes, nothing soaked in aged balsamic vinegar, etc).
My boyfriend and I sat at the diner style counter. He ordered a corn beef club and I ordered chicken salad. It looked glum — what with the regular square bread and the generic looking ingredients. I bit into my sandwich and I almost died of goodness. This is the best effing chicken salad I had EVER tasted. My boyfriend liked his sandwich as well. And the guy behind the counter was very friendly, very nice, and very genuine and helpful. Got a return customer in me and my boyfriend.

Wow! Harvard Café was just featured on a local blog, showcasing how unique they are with their offering straight-​forward honest options. I will be certain to frequent this place a lot more. THIS is the kind of business attitude I want to encourage.
Screw all those with false friendliness and shmarmy attitudes.

Replacing Lee’s Sandwich Shop is the new Harvard Café, a simple counter-​service sandwich shop doling out subs, hot and cold sandwiches, burgers and salads.
The décor hasn’t changed much. And we’re not just talking since the shop changed hands… we’re talking since the seventies most likely. But hole-​in-​the-​wall quick and cheap lunch spots usually aren’t known for atmosphere… they’re known for their good, inexpensive food.
Well inexpensive and good Harvard Café is not. Today I wondered in ready to try Lee’s for the first time, only to find out they changed the name (and ownership) to Harvard Café. For $ 9.19, I got a roast beef and cheese sandwich, on whole wheat bread, with lettuce and tomato, and a bottle water. The bread was nearly flat, the roast beef (what little there was) had a greasy, almost phosphorescent coloring and the cheese seemed like it’d been sitting out. Kind of warm, kind of mushy.
For the price and the size of the sandwich you get, you can easily go to the grocery store, buy a loaf of bread, some good Boar’s Head meat and cheese, and some fresh lettuce and tomato, and make your own sandwiches at home for next to nothing. Or, you can go over to Market in The Square and pay about the same price for a manmouth sandwich of far superior quality.
Sorry Harvard Café, but I just don’t see this going any where.