Lunch at Google!

I am a little embarrassed to admit, but today, I had lunch at Google for the first time.

As a techie foodie, you would imagine I have many friends that work in Google, and I would be hitting them for lunch every week:) Atlas, that is not true. As of now, I have only know of 1 friend working in Google.

My friend's cube is in the main campus, but for ease of parking reason, we went to a satellite campus for lunch.

The cafeteria is fair high tech looking, with flat screen LCD display showing the special of the day.

I took a slice of the smoke salmon pizza, some grill vegetables, sole and a sushi bowl, consisting of sushi rice, seaweed shreds and topped with raw tuna and salmon. For drinks, I got a bottle of Vignette Wine Country soda-Pinot Noir.

The smoke salmon pizza is quite good. The smoke salmon is topped with capers and a drizzle of sour cream sauce. The pizza itself was thin, but a little tough, but I did pick up the last piece of pizza, so that was to be expected. The grilled vegetables were simply tossed with olive oil and tasted very fresh. The sole is pan seared and quite juicy. It is topped with a relish of olives and tomatoes which give it some flavor. The sushi bowl was excellent. The raw fish tasted very fresh and I enjoy the texture of the meat very much.

I got round 2 at a different cafeteria, serving Cambodian specialties. I had some of the shrimp curry and pumpkin curry. Again the shrimp were fresh, firm and sweet. The pumpkin curry was very sweet as well. I would prefer if the curry was a little more spicy, but the quality of the ingredients were indeed excellent.

We decided it was enough savory food, and started on dessert. I had a pumpkin mousse served in a small, hallowed out pumpkin, topped with whipped cream. The mousse was not too sweet and very creamy. I would happily pay for dessert of this quality in a restaurant.

We finished with a freshly brewed cafe latte, with Google's own espresso machine.

After lunch, my host took us for a walk around the main campus. I notice how much food was available around the campus. There's a small cafeteria in almost every building, each serving different types of food. That's in addition to the break room, whose fridge is filled with all types of drinks. My host suggested trying the Godiva chocolate drink, which is also excellent!

I started working at the end of the "Dot COM" boom, so I always felt like I knew what lavish food arrangement companies could prepare for employees, but this exceeded my expectation.

I wish Google continue to do well and I can come back for more lunches:) If you are reading this...don't forget to click on the Google Ad!