Cafe 24

I work in the building across the street so if I want lunch its a convenient place to go. They have breakfast, soup, salads, and sandwiches. I have yet to try their breakfast but the salads and sandwiches I’ve ordered were pretty good. They also have a veggie chili that is bomb!
Price is a little expensive but that’s expected for any café/​restaurants around this area.

Great café for a weekday lunch. I especially like their Rico Salad (romaine lettuce with fruit, chicken salad and walnuts), Turkey Cranberry sandwich (turkey with cranberry sauces, reminds me of Thanksgiving) and Roasted Tomato soup (tomato soup with corn, only offered sometimes).
They also have free bread with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, and free water.

Came here for lunch since I work right across the street. It kind of confusing finding the café but when I did. It was totally worth it. Had the chicken corn chowder and it was delicious, nice chunk of chicken and fresh croutons. The Cali BLT was super good with a lot of bacon.

As an employee at this campus, I welcome Café 24 as a lunch spot. The wait for food can get a little long during lunch rush hours, but that’s to be expected. Three people are making food for all the orders, and they do it so well.
Favorite regular items:
+Spiro’s Plate: greek salad with hummus — fresh and filing
+Grilled Cheese with soup: this is not just any grilled cheese, it’s amazing
+Frank’s chicken salad sandwich: love avocado? foccacia bread? this is your guy.
Favorite specials:
+Portabello Sandwich: I cannot explain how much I love this sandwich.
+Power Salad: kale, shiitake mushrooms, edamama, walnuts, brown rice/​quinoa
+Pizza/​Salad Day! One huge slice of pizza with a side of salad
If you are unsure what to eat at UCSF Mission Bay, Café 24 has a great array of options. The cost is reasonable considering they are one of the few places around to serve such delicious food.
Adrenaline hours after 3PM are also a plus — half off cookies and coffee!

everytime I come here I am so dissapointed. It doesn’t matter what I order, whether it’s the daily special, the soup, the salad, the sandwich. I’ve tried so many things here because I want to find SOMETHING that I like here.
Maybe it’s just not my style of food. I don’t like tiny portions and huge prices with mediocre tasting food. Also it’s got that healthy food, organic vibe going for it. Not that that’s a negative, but blahh not really my style.
I dislike their balsamic vinagrette that they use. I don’t like the tiny ass sandwiches. I’m hungry for some REAL FOOD!
I did like their soup one time. It was some sort of capellini soup with chicken. I admit that was good. I should have went every day that week in order to get it.
Everything else is crap. I never want to come back here again, and I won’t have to. :)

I like Café 24. It’s a café inside the UCSF Mission Bay campus, and definitely a solid place to grab food during breaks or off work.
The food is a bit pricier than other places, but at least you get a decent amount of food. They have daily specials, so keep an eye out for those!

Overpriced food AND a $ 10 credit card minimum. You make me sick.

My regular lunch place. I cut 2 stars because they are too expensive for a cafeteria. The food is good. Wish they serve multigrain bread with salad.
The staff is friendly. The lady who fills water container and bread basket is super nice. I wish they had some kind of special offer for regular customers.

Came in early around 11. It was empty.
Very simple inside, has a cafeteria feel.
Ordered the Bambino which is tomato, mint and fresh mozzarella. It also came with a side salad, which had a sweet and delightful taste for a vinaigrette. Loved the sandwich and the salad. It was A LOT of food, I ended up eating the other half of the sandwich for dinner.
Views are not that interesting, but it’s very nice to sit outside.

I feel the need to Unilocal Café 24 because I feel like other people are too harsh! For a campus café, it’s not bad at all — in fact I might even venture to say that it’s pretty good. I’ve been to other similar café/​cafeterias and walked in circles just trying to find somehing that seemed mildly palatable. Café 24 offers several (moderately appealing) sandwich choices and they totally try to class it up with brie and ciabbatta bread. And they don’t taste bad, either! I had the sourdough BLT and it was stuffed full of bacon and avocado, and the salad was fresh with a tasty sweet vinaigrette. Most sandwiches range from $ 7 to $ 10, pretty standard fare. And portions are decent as well, the salad and sandwich will definitely fill your appetite. It wasn’t spectacular, but at least the ingredients are fresh and I didn’t feel ill afterwards.
I just don’t think you can be too picky with this kind of stuff. Café 24 is no fine establishment but for what it is, it does the job more than well enough!

My review is based on what I ate: garden vegetable soup and a couple small pieces of chicken breast over brown rice and other misc stuff. I added a pic, so you can see what I’m talking about. This was purchased at 3 pm, when everything is ½ off everyday. Total was $ 4.61. Great lunch deal! (had a late lunch). Boy, I’m glad I ordered the soup to go along with the rice dish, otherwise it’d be so dry and bland! The combination of the two is a must. Since they need to get rid of the leftover food from lunch, they lower the price to get rid of it (which makes sense). The quality isn’t as great when it’s freshly made, but for the ½ off price, it’s a good value. I would have liked more veggies in the soup. It was an A-​OK lunch. 2.5 stars based on the food, rounded up to 3 for the ½ off price. I’m thinking of going back to purchase some other ½ off stuff for dinner or lunch for the next day.

For UCSF food, this is the best choice. I got a chinese chicken salad (they call it the jackie chan, gotta love the humor there) and it was fresh tasting, they didn’t skimp on the chicken, and had a good amount of dressing. It was around $ 7 and wasn’t too bad, but it definitely wasn’t that filling, I felt like I should have ordered 2 of them.
The next time I ate there I got a breakfast bagel with ham, cheese, and egg. I did not like this at all. The ham had that weird texture where it was kind of grainy-​ish and chewy (not a good combination). I didn’t finish this at all and actually only took a couple bites before throwing it out.
But that is just the lesson, I will be back for lunch and dinner many many times.

Summary based on 1 visit while killing time waiting for a meeting to start:
–average coffee for the Bay Area, which means decent
–good service. You can ask for coffee without using some sort of weird Starbucks like approved language
–cost ok
–setting ok
Bottom line is I’d come here again and, if stuck in bad weather, would probably try the food

I gotta say, I wasn’t that much of a fan the first time I tried this place. It’s semi-​pricy for a school restaurant, and some of the food is kind of normal.
But then I tried the Frank’s Chicken Salad Sandwich with Avocado. About $ 7, but SO WORTH IT. It’s a regular sandwich on wheat bread with a chicken salad that has yummy cranberries inside. The best part about it — they give you sooooo much avocado. Basically an entire avocado in one sandwich. I’ve never been to a place that put that much avocado (see picture above). It’s absolutely amazingly delicious. I’ve had it at least 5 times, and I still can’t get enough. YUM.
Anyways, other than that, the house salad is pretty good, but other things are alright. Not bad, but not super amazing. Well then again, I can’t get over how yummy the Frank’s Chicken Salad Sandwich is, and I don’t try much else, haha.

Oh, children. Let me break it down for you.
For those shocked at such pricey food in a ‘University, ’ as a former insider let me be the first to tell you that the UCSF does not see itself as a University — you know, as an institution that educates the best and brightest young minds, etc. etc., but rather, as a very comfortable place to work for very pampered and entitled higher-​ups who, let me tell you, are making CRAZY money while pretending to be ‘public servants.’ With all the Big Pharma sniffing around Genentech Hall these days, you need look no further than the rationale behind your $ 10 sandwich.
Now that we’ve got that sorted (and don’t you feel better now? Not), about the food: It’s the same outfit that runs Dos Pinas down the road off of 16^th & whatever’s after DeHaro and is good. When I was in the trenches at UC I was happy with the food here — but let me put it in context: the first wave of people at Genentech Hall might as well have been pioneers on the prairie with covered wagons. There was NOTHING down there. I was there when they closed the old café (orange-​carrot soup that tasted like hot OJ, yeah, more of that please) and for a month we ate out of the bookstore. Nothing like four solid weeks of goldfish crackers and Pepperidge Farm cookies to make a girl appreciate protein, let me tell you.
«Adrenalin Hour» deserves it’s own star. Such a great concept and I wish they’d do it where I work now.
Also, one extra star because one of their dishes is named after me. Ego strokes will get you everywhere.

Convenience is the only reason I go here. It’s expensive and the food isn’t all that spectacular. For a restaurant in a building with restricted access populated mostly by graduate students making what probably equates to a something around minimum wage or less, they’re way overpriced, but hey we’re lazy and need to get back to the all important lab work… so they get huge lunch crowds.
If you need lunch, don’t feel like walking off campus for food, and just don’t like the concept of physically burning money but do have the money to spend, café 24 is the way to go.

Why did I choose to work in Berkeley over Mission Bay when Café 24 is in GH? Well, maybe it was the hundreds of restaurants that surround Cal, compared to the… hmm…well…um.there’s…wait, no nevermind… are there any that surround Mission Bay? Ok, that was an easy choice.
But in terms of on-​campus food, UCSF is the clear winner. Café 24 is probably the flagship example for this, as they have some fairly delicious sandwich and salad options. Last time I had the Cooper’s Pressed Pesto, which featured roasted chicken, prosciutto, onions, peppers, and pesto, on a pressed baguette. You won’t find a much better sandwich than this.
And since I’m no longer there, its also a good place to run into UCSF folk I haven’t seen in awhile. Although, as other reviews have noted, I am a bit confused as to if/​how non-​UCSF people have access to the café.
As others have pointed out, you will pay a bit of a lunch premium for all this — would it have been too much to ask for the Genentech settlement to subsidize a few of these sandwiches?

So, I sort of hate this place, sort of love it. I *want* to love it, because they actually have pretty good food (for the most part). I really love the dressing that comes on their salads! Their sandwiches are great, the chili is delicious, coffee is pretty decent, and they have these great fruit/​granola/​yogurt breakfast cups. However, they are serving an almost totally captive audience — all of genentech and byers hall. They know this, all too well, and their prices reflect it. It’s not airport prices, but it’s definitely more than I would like to be spending for lunch (or breakfast, for that matter)!
The one *massively* redeeming quality? Adrenaline hours. After 3P on week days all coffee and cookies are half off! Also, their pre-​made «grab-​n-​go» items are on sale (sandwiches, pasta, etc). This makes it totally awesome. What would be a $ 6 sandwich any other time is suddenly a delicious $ 3 sandwich. This makes the cheap bastard in me smile with glee. Cheap, cheap glee.

Mission bay area is under wild rush apt construction and from what I read, also building a second medical center for UCSF in that area.
Currently the area is sparse for food places. I was pretty disappointed to see only Subway, Caffe Terzetto and Peasant Pies in that area. It was my first time at mission bay and it literally felt like suburbia, contrast that with the embarcadero/​mission area.
I was taking a course at Genentech Hall and was pleased to see they actually had a cafeteria lurking on the second floor. It’s your typical cafeteria venue, nothing fabu. Decent prices. I had their ‘street slice pizza, which is a quarter slice of tomato, basil n cheese. Not too shabby. The crust was toasted thin and crispy the way I like it. Good portion size for 3bucks. I’m not a fan of sandwiches; however, I did notice a lot of the people were getting them and they look big, if only I was a sandwich lover.
Plus one star for adrenaline hour – love it when places avoid tossing food, unlike every other place who would rather haul unsold food to the dumpster than sell it for a discount at the end of the day.

The dedicated SF explorer will find it well worth their time to eat at Café 24, since you get to take a look at the new UCSF Mission Bay campus while you’re there. Indeed, you’ll probably see more than you intended while you’re trying to figure out where the entrance is. Hint: if you don’t have a student badge, you need to go to the north side of Genentech Hall, and through the door on the ground level just east of the nifty amphitheatre-​esque front stairway. Then go to the stairway in the center of the lobby, up one flight, and walk west along the balcony and into a hallway. Eventually, you’ll come to Café 24 on your left.
The Café itself serves the typical panini, salad and pizza menu, and it’s pretty damn good, and reasonably priced. Plus you can sit outside on the balcony and enjoy the sun and the commanding view of… the empty lot across 16^th St. But I’m sure a pretty new building is already on its way. Their one mistake was putting the «pick up» counter between the «order» and «pay» counter, so when the kitchen starts backing up at the 12:30 rush (and it’s a pretty big rush – I don’t think the students here have many other options), you have to shove your way back into the line to get your food.
But all in all, I found it well worth the walk over from the office. The bright and shiny makeover of Mission Bay isn’t looking too shabby so far.