Brookings Institution Cafeteria

The cafeteria at the Brookings Institution is brilliant! I have visited this cafeteria on a couple of occasions when coming to Brookings to attend events — there is a lot of variety and choice. The food is fresh and good, and there is plenty of seating available.

A lot of my coworkers eat here frequently, and we aren’t employed by Brookings… This place has a lot of options, and best of all, they are all really affordable for the pricey Dupont Circle area.
I tried it out for the first time today and got the «mini-​sandwich» with lettuce, tomato, pickles, red pepper, cucumber, and pesto mayo at the create-​your-​own sandwich bar. The «mini-​sandwich» comes on at least a six inch long baguette, and for me, it was a regular sandwich. This was for approximately $ 3.50. You can add soup with the mini-​sandwich for just over $ 5. Definitely cheaper than the nearby Cosi and Panera. The only downside about my experience was that they were out of the portabello mushrooms.
They had a lot of other options, as well — a large salad bar, pizza, and a rotating breakfast and lunch menu all week long.
For a lot of options at a reasonable price, I’d recommend stopping by Brookings.

Cafeteria (n) — the establishment you visit when you’re overworked, underpaid, and accustomed to eating sad, overpriced meals at your cubicle.

The epitome of mediocre.

Soups are great and only $ 2.50. The vegetable purée soups are especially great. Salad bar and hot food aren’t quite as cheap, but definitely a good deal compared to other places in Dupont. Great if you’re close to Brookings.

Buffet-​style cafeteria with salad, fish, meat, desserts and other options. For the price you pay, the food isn’t that good.
My first time, the people serving some of the food gave poor information and hurried me along that it was tough to figure out how to order. Thus, the actual experience was also poor.
I prefer more similar options like Sizzex.

The Brookings Institution Cafeteria is literally the cafeteria of the Brookings Institution — the famous DC think tank that G. Gordon Liddy once wanted to bomb during the Nixon administration, and now serves as a moderate public policy place that churns out suggestions for DC politicos. Just like its politics, the cafeteria is middle of the road: not that expensive, not that cheap; nothing great, nothing terrible; not a lot of selection, but still enough to grab something.
In the middle there’s a salad bar, with your generic salad choices. To your left is the hot food bar, which changes but usually constantly has some sort of pizza. On the right you have an ice cream machine, and some sandwiches.
The place closes at 2 for lunch. There’s more than enough seating. And BTW, you do not need to work at, or have anything remotely to do with Brookings to eat here. I come here to get salad. Every now and then I’ll see something interesting in the special and get something from there.
You might even see a celebrity! (If you consider people who appear on lectures on CSPAN celebrities …)

Dupont has whatever you crave. But what happens when you don’t crave anything particular? Some days you just want something to banish the hunger pangs (and all the better if it’s light on the wallet).
It’s for this reason that I’m glad I found the Brook-​a-​teria. For $ 6.95 I got a pretty large salad and a 12oz. cup of turkey chili (which was quite good!). Compare that to the tasty but expensive Sweet Green and Chop’t which usually top $ 10.
In summary: cheap, satiating, not gourmet or super-​awesome by any stretch of the imagination, but a place that I’ll keep in my mind for days when I probably should have just brought lunch from home.

I’m surprised that this place isn’t one of the best reviewed lunch sports in DC. I love this cafeteria and when I went for lunch I was really impressed by the food and the selection.
I went for the salad bar. It boasted tons of great toppings including tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, hearts of palm, croutons, fruit and bunch of different pasta salads. My salad was huge and hearty and I devoured it. They also had a really nice selection of fresh fruit.
My friend went for the hot food bar, and he too devoured his chicken, rice, macaroni and cheese, and corn. He’s a big eater and he was certainly satisfied. The food may have been sitting under heat lamps for god knows how long, but it didn’t taste dry at all.
Oh to the desserts! They have a frozen yogurt machine and tons of pastries and brownies. Everything was delicious.
I highly recommend stopping by if you’re in the neighborhood. It’s WAY better than your typical cafeteria food and you get to eat (or at least stand in line) with some of DC’s smartest people.

This place is exactly like the retail cafeterias at my college – some decent sandwich and salad options but simply too expensive to be worth it. When I go here, I get a calzone or something like that and plan to drink out of a water fountain – I’m not going to pay $ 2.41 (including tax) for a Gatorade or something like that.
Edit: Okay, the pizza is pretty delicious, but for $ 4 a slice.

The other review is simply not true. I frequent Brookings because I work next door. The salad bar is crap, the soups are crap, and it’s all very pricey. The best thing in that cafeteria is the soda machine outside.

One of the best kept secrets in DuPont Circle is the outstanding cafeteria at the Brookings Institution. It’s open to the public and has one of the best salad bars in D.C. and daily soup offerings that are anything but typical institutional fare. Turkey and white bean chili is especially good. It’s also really affordable – much easier on the wallet than Chop’t or O Salad Mio. They also offer hot dishes – usually a meat entrée and several sides and a pizza of the day that is usually worth consideration.
If you work in DuPont and feel uninspired by Baja Fresh, Cosi, etc I strongly recommend that you give Brookings a shot.