Cafe Exchange

Not bad. Could get a little busy but they have large selections of everything; which is a huge plus.

Way too expensive for mediocre food! I spent $ 10 on a small bowl of flavorless pasta. A cookie is about $ 4 with tax. Beware of the Letter C grade on the window. I advise just to walk to Fulton Street which is 5 mins for a decent lunch.

I do love the quality of their fruit and hot bar items. It always looks so delicious. Service isn’t good though and two stars for the PRICE!!! Way too darn expensive. Come on!!! $ 9 for a tiny bowl of fruit? Ridiculous prices… our entire office complains about this. Beware as they have a C on the door. Avoid this place like the plague if you don’t want to go broke.

UPDATE June 11, 216: Just lowered this to one star after noticing their NYC Health Department Rating («C») and then reading the report online. I’d recommend you read it yourself before you consider eating here. Really. Just read it. My original review is below. Find the grading here:
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I work next door and frequently eat here when I need something NYC-​crazy-​fast so I can get back to my desk, wolf it down between calls, and keep working on my forthcoming stress-​induced heart attack.
Yes, there is a wide array of food choices, all of which is of a «sorta ok» quality.
The stuff on the steam table looks like a high school cafeteria, and tastes like it too — meaning bland, gloppy, and lukewarm.
The salad bar is mostly all right if uninspired, and some of the add-​ins, like the hearts of palm, or artichokes, can be inedible. I pick them out of my bowl with the flimsy plastic forks they hand out and then see if I can fling them in my wastebasket — but when I miss they bounce across the floor and leave a salad-​dressing stain on the carpet.
The prices are high, unless you order the daily special, but watch out for things like the little teeny bags of chips ($ 2.50 last time I looked) and the cans of soda, which can push the total from a «little pricey» to «how much did you say it came to? Really?»
The basement seating is ample but dark and dingy. That’s OK if you are eating pizza or a burger and don’t want to be seen, but if you are eating something healthy and uninspiring — most of the offerings — you may want to kill yourself by the end of your meal since it is so dreary. There’s more light upstairs.
As one reviewer — a tour guide — noted in a separate review, for some reason this «café» is on the regular rotation for large groups.
Woe if you end up behind a group — they are all trying to figure out what they want to eat, even as they are shocked at the prices. Because they’ve been touristing all morning, they will be simultaneously trying to find the seating and the bathroom. This is not a comment on or about tourists, but on the Café Exchange — not hospitable or user friendly. To make it even worse, for some reason one of the two front glass doors is broken — perennially — and so when a group of 60 bus passengers streams in thru the single door, you can grow old and your food cold waiting to escape.
Finally, most of the register staff are chilly and impatient. A smile and «hello» wouldn’t kill them. Or, maybe it would, which could be why they pretty much avoid that drill. «Hi, nice to see you again regular customer, thank you so much for spending $ 60 last week on salads, please come back soon!»
You can do better in the neighborhood, and come to think of it, I’m not even sure why I eat there unless it is pouring rain and I don’t want to get soaked by going across the street for a salad.

All I wanted was a bagel with cream cheese. I’ve been out of NY for 4 years & I was craving one.
Service was quick & professional.
The «salt bagel» actually had EXACTLY 4 grains of salt on it. I know because I counted. The cream cheese was stale & stinky.
So, I don’t care how fast the guy at the counter is or how efficient the girl at the register is, I am not going there again.
And, by the way, it says a lot that a deli on an extraordinarily busy block surrounded by office buildings & precious few coffee carts was so quiet at 8:45 a.m. on a weekday.

Love this place for lunch. So many options and they have specials everyday. Also after 2 pm, their hot/​cold food bar is 50% off!

I am a licensed tour guide here in New York and I always bring guests here for a quick meal. The food variety is wide — everything from pizza and hot sandwiches to sushi and Korean food — the prices are more than reasonable and the staff is friendly. I especially like Joanna who usually works the register at the rear of the store. Her loveliness is only exceeded by her kindness.

I walked into Café Exchange this morning with 0 minutes to spare and a voracious burning hunger in my core. I had skipped breakfast before leaving my house, and my stomach was growling so loudly on the subway, I thought people would assume I was smuggling an angry dog under my sweater. When I finally made it out of the subway, Café Exchange was right in front of me, like an oasis in the desert. The establishment looks like a basic breakfast/​lunch place in corporate Manhattan. It’s a big place, with a wide variety of hot and cold beverages, sandwiches, and salads. I ordered the breakfast usual; a cup of coffee with a toasted roll. It tasted like every other cup of coffee and the roll was pretty average, too. Nevertheless, this place really gets the four stars because of the sweet and inviting employees. They were all smiling and ready to help. The guy who prepared my roll was making the customers laugh with jokes, and the check-​out-​girls were very helpful when I asked about non-​dairy milk options for my coffee. They went out of their way to check if they had anything available. The only tip I would give the manager is to provide more non-​dairy milk options for those who do not drink cow’s milk.

I’d give this place ZERO stars if I could.
Sometimes I work near here so I kind of have no choice but to go here sometimes …
This place is SUPER expensive and the food is mediocre (AT BEST) and the guys on the grill are always extremely RUDE …
Today was the last straw … I got the USUAL attitude from guy on grill and $ 13 for a DISGUSTING chicken cheesesteak and a small tea. So done.

Ouch. Price gouging. I ordered 1 slice of pepperoni pizza and a 20 oz. bottle of soda and paid over $ 7. That’s past the limit of what’s reasonable. They also have a minimum of $ 10 on credit cards, so this is not convenient for those of us who don’t carry cash often. Yes, they have a variety of choices, but I’d look elsewhere if you’re not trying to spend all your savings on lunch…

Nothing to right home about. Food is decent prices are a little high though. Lots of tourists pass through and they look at the wide variety of choices however it holds up the lines.

It’s a behemoth bodega with myriad seating. There’s a hot sandwich section, a cold sandwich section, a hot buffet section, a cold buffet section, there’s also a salad section and a pizza section. And there are a few cashiers. Tons of people come through here, it’s very crowded, but the wait is never very long. It’s easy to get in and out of here quickly, once you get used to the crowds… What I like best is that after 2pm the prepared hot/​cold sandwiches and the prepared hot/​cold buffets are half-​price! Some things are better than others, not everything is for everybody, but things like the plain Tuna Sushi and the Broadway sandwich are always winners for me, especially for half-​price after 2pm!

Over priced and very rude! Guy who made my sandwich refused to see if they had jalapeños for a sandwich I paid $ 9 for! Disappointing to say the least.

Today I went to exchange, just like any other day for lunch. On a regular basis I spend about $ 15-​$ 20 for lunch in Café Exchange. As I’m walking down their buffet line I serve myself some sushi, and try a piece before I decide on everything else I’m getting. A female staff member tells me not to try anything with the nastiest attitude I have ever encountered. When I apologize and excuse myself and continue to keep browsing, the employee continues to talk about what I just did to other employees in a disrespectful tone. So I approach her and tell her that although what I’d done wasn’t okay, I would appreciate it if she changed her tone towards me. She then proceeded to waive her hands in my face and told me to speak to the manager and continued to raise her voice at me. The sorry excuse for a manager just told me not to worry about it and kept wiping down a counter. At this point I’m about to pick something else up, and before I do, again I hear the same employee still talking about the miscellaneous incident so I get fed up, and then another employee shouts that they should make me pay for the 1 piece of sushi that I had sampled. I told them I would pay for the entire order and it wasn’t about the money but about the service, and they continued to go back and forth with me. I have never had such an awful experience over lunch. Completely ruined my appetite. I left the food right there and proceeded to exit.
WORST SERVICE EVER !!! WILL NEVER EAT HERE AGAIN!!!

Café Exchange is really a 4 star financial district deli. Except I had to knock them down a star today.
They pulled a Russian rear end my car insurance scam job on me today. I ordered the lobster bisque. I bring it back to work and it was fake crab meat aka surimi bisque!!!
WHAT??? THAT’S NOT EVEN THE SAME GOSH DARN CRUSTACEAN!

Grade Pending — sadly, Café Exchange read my original review and got on board with its tourist trap peers

After landing in the financial district, this place was recommended to us by someone who worked for one of the tourist companies with the statue of liberty hat lol
First, i didn’t know how much food this place had, there’s so much, a lot of variety. I got a small plain pizza that was supposed to be $ 7.95, but I got it for $ 7. My mom and aunt got food from the other side, and they were decently satisfied. At 2 there’s a special where everything is half-​off apparently. Overall I’d come back again but maybe not since I have more places to visit. :) it is a little expensive though but it makes sense because of where it is right across from the stock exchange.

After getting tired of Halal food I decided to try something else. I walked into this place and was impressed by the sheer variety of choices. I got a burger with an order of fries. It was a good burger, I was satisfied. The service was fast. The only downside is that this place is ridiculously expensive. On the plus side they have a special every day between 12 – 2. Each day it varies on what they got on sale. On Mondays its pasta and pizza, on Wednesday its burgers etc. So to sum up food was good, service was good, prices are terrible. The special makes up for it somewhat.

agree with all the ratings above, i just started working at a diff company downtown and was used to paying midtown prices for lunch but even this is ridiculously priced. I got a chicken wrap with onions and tomatoes and got charged $ 9.10… seriously??? in midtown the most expensive would be $ 8. This place is way too overpriced.
probably recommend going somewhere else.

Let me start with the pricing, as is most of the pricing in FiDi, it’s stupid expensive. It’s one thing to pay a lot to get some awesome food, but do not expect that when you come here.
There is one sandwich I love, but I will get to that later.
As many other Unilocalers have said, this is a place that is going to be piled with tourists due to its location, but it is also a place with various food items, hot and cold food bars, sandwiches, etc. It is very expensive for sandwiches ($ 9, really?), but the one I would tell you to get is the Avocado BLT, damn, it’s probably because I love my avocados.
Anyway, go here if you are desperate and have no choice, but really? Don’t go if you don’t have to. I would take a longer walk down a few blocks to Flavors and get some quality stuff.