Cafe Sol

The food is delicious. .really. However the ONLY reason i didn’t give five stars is because of how looooooong it takes to get the food. When you only have an hour for lunch… and it takes 25 – 30 minutes to get a salad or chicken… that is not worth it. Even if i call ahead… I still end up standing there.

I would give this place a 3.5 rating. Close to work. Good vegetarian options. Like their grilled veggie pizza a lot. Veg. Pasta is ok. Risotto is good. Wait time is lil longer. Otherwise, one of the best option in this area.

The Quesadillas are awesome! Especially the Shrimp one. And they come with a side, I usually get it with Chicken Tortilla Soup. Good price for what you get– they give you a bunch of Guacamole on the side and salsa, this place is much better than Café Presto– just a few feet away in the same building. Neither fast nor slow I would say, i’ll definitely return to try their other items!

Burritos are excellent

I’ve been eating here 5 days a week for about two years and it still hasn’t gotten old. Paztor and his crew are on top of their game every day with top notch service and phenomenal food (all for super cheap prices!)
Do yourself a favor and start eating here immediately!
Hint to the uninitiated: call in your order to reduce the wait time ;-)

While Santa Monica is home to many culinary innovations, few come close to the Thursday special at Café Sol. The special consists of two chicken skewers with veggies and onions accompanies by cucumbers in a delicious and refreshing yogurt sauce. However, the true highlight of the dish is the mound of decadent rice that lies underneath it all. While we are not sure exactly what the sauce on the rice consists of, we affectionately refer to it as «cheesy rice» (even though the owner insists it is in fact cheese-​less). The Thursday special has caused quite the commotion at our office, with many calls to myself and others inquiring as to which day of the week it is available (no, it is not the Wednesday special and no they will not make it on Wednesdays), and many exclamations of «TGIT!» Really, any day that’s not Thursday is a sad, sad day.
Real talk: they also make an awesome blackened salmon, but the wait can get bad, so call your order in ahead of time.

The best of the meager Yahoo center’s food court. My favorite item is their chicken & salami salad. The wait for your food during lunch can get beyond ridiculous, however. It’s a decent price for a decent meal, but nothing outstanding either way.

This place has been a favorite of mine since yahoo center was MGM plaza and I worked for MGM.
The menu is very hit or miss (wouldn’t recommend the pizzas or pastas) but I’ve found the hits to be very good.
First off, the chicken quesadilla is one of the best i’ve ever had. tons of marinated chicken with the right amount of cheese and grilled to a nice crisp and served with guacamole and salsa. Definitely recommend trying it out.
The only other dish I get on a regular basis is their teriyaki chicken with vegetables. love the steamed veggies and the chicken is really tasty. Definitely a nice healthy alternative to the quesadilla.

I am bashful in exposing my feeling most of the time now.
The only reason I am telling of this place is because
the «Special of the Day» made my freakin’ day!!! I am not even a food critic. LOL.
The manager, Pastor (I may have misspelled his name :) yikes!)
is very aware of who his patrons are and most people want a descent meal for a descent price. This place makes food FRESH … yeah sorry you have to wait for it … booh hoo :”)”” ” … hey here’s an idea … BRING YOUR FREAKING LUNCH TO WORK !!! (Yelling high) Make it at home!!! Anyway, sorry for the diatribe but this place is worth the visit!
The head chef Victor is an amazing artist with food. I love mixing my food. The t.v. dinner-​style of eating does not work with me.
I enjoyed eating at Café Sol and all of their food taste great
TOGETHER.
Shalom,
g martin leibowitz

OK for lunch. I generally get the salmon or chicken parm or picatta when they have the special. Take out food at Yahoo center. You generally get a pretty good lunch, but nothing special.
We eat here 1 – 2 times a week. It is OK, but sometimes slow if there is a crowd. This is another one of those places I go to get stuff to eat… when I am hungry.

2.5 stars
It’s probably the best of the three «restaurants» in this meager food court at the Yahoo center. Quite depressing when you consider that, really.
Anyhow, it does the trick for me if I forget to bring my lunch to work. The veggie burrito used to be my go-​to order, but lately I’ve come to like the «healthy salad,» which comes with a good-​sized piece of salmon on top. It’s healthy, as the name suggests, hearty, and satisfying.
They take their sweet time, however, especially if it’s crowded. So plan accordingly. Still relatively fast take out, but compared to it’s less satisfying neighbor, Star Wrap, they’re a little slow.

A low three, not that it’s a legitimate option. Coming here for lunch as a result of work close by. To echo other reviews… it is very slow! I’ve had a few of the wraps, today’s choice was the Thai wrap. It does the trick and had a spicy sauce. I’ve been eating the chicken tortilla soup there for a while now and it’s definitely alright but nothing mind blowing. Go there for a bite, a slow bite, but only if you can’t leave the complex for something better.

I had their salmon chopped salad off their «power» menu. It wasn’t anything special. The salmon portion was pretty big though. I didn’t expect a salad from a cafeteria restaurant to be $ 11 though. I don’t know if I’d go back again. My friend had the chicken burrito and loved it. So maybe it just depends on what you order. The burrito was a lot cheaper and it was huge (like all burritos should be…).
My co-​worker calls it Café Slow. Yeah, they did take a while now that you mention it…

Summary: Food made by people who don’t know how to cook, for office workers too much in a hurry to care.
The food here, like much of the very slim offerings in the Yahoo! Center, can be most generously described as edible but mediocre-​to-​bad. I’ve had half a dozen meals here now, which is about all I can stand. The best of them was a decent barbecue chicken pizza. Last time it was fairly terrible spaghetti with awful, spongy mystery-​meat meatballs, a fistful of fake «Parmesan» cheese added without my having asked them to, and sodden pieces of garlic bread sealed into the container with the spaghetti that are mush by the time you begin to eat.
The last straw today was a «Chipotle shrimp» burrito. The burrito was ice-​cold. The frozen shrimp were unseasoned and merely thawed. The black beans were unseasoned, apparently right out of the can. The brown rice was unseasoned. There were a few chunks of fresh avocado, and a small amount of sauce the appeared to be crema mixed with a smidgen of chipotle sauce, just enough to make it light pink. All this was haphazardly mishmashed together into something that doesn’t deserve to be called a burrito. It was edible in the sense that it was non-​poisonous, but that’s it. It actually made me angry — you can’t just throw a bunch of canned and frozen unseasoned ingredients into a tortilla and expect it to taste like anything. This is food made by people who don’t care. No, scratch that — this isn’t food, it’s feed.
I suppose I have to thank Café Sol — they’ve motivated me to work harder at bringing my own food to the office, and keeping a few ingredients in our pantry at work so I can make my own lunch. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever eat here again.

You know… I would be inclined to give this place more than 3 stars if they didn’t take so dang long each time I order something. I am thoroughly convinced that they don’t have a sequential numbering system.
Sorry, had to vent about that.
Other than the wait, this is a decent option for those of us working in the Yahoo Center/​Water Gardens, MTV building/​Universal building in Santa Monica. Their pasta selections are decent, and they give a generous helping of it (including 2 slices of garlic toast!). The quesadilla is also good… but I haven’t had too many other things on the menu yet (despite how long I’ve been working in the Water Gardens now).
3 Shakas… potential for improvement, perhaps?