Franklin Templeton Cafe

Came last week for marvelous omelette and loved it Anxiously waiting to do encore b4 dr appointment 2day Unfortunately missed breakfast but enjoyed awesome burger with sweet potatoes friesReally great service as it was cooked to orderThe cappuccino was delicious

Franklin Templeton Cafe has now expanded and doubled the size of the cafe. The new east side of the cafe now operates with an auto-pay system through cashier-less kiosks and self-checkout stations --even offering ApplePay!Breakfast and lunch is served between 7am-2pm in a chic and modern-styled dining space. For lunch, they offer the daily burgers and performance bowls to the seasonal grill and table options. I came by on their first day of opening and opted for the steak and frites. The meal was tasty and fulfilling with everything under $10.

The menu changes daily, it's great! I worked near Franklin Templeton so the short walk was also nice.http://franklintempletonsm.cafebonappetit.com/cafe/park-place-cafe/

Open to the public. Brekkie (cook to order) or breakfast bar with decent options. Peet's coffee.Lunch usually offers two lightly creative items, with sides. Good quality, nothing to rave about. Wood-fired pizza, pasta bar/taco bar/whatever bar ...varies.Good value.PLENTY of tables, and decent sized outdoor patio adjacent.

Since they raised the prices, the portions have gotten a lot smaller. The grill and pizza are where it's at.

This place is very close to my office, so I eat here frequently. The food options are great for the price - I'm assuming it's subsidized by Franklin Templeton, but they'll let anyone eat here for the discounted price, which is awesome! I got a peach-stuffed pork loin the other day for $7! It was wonderful. The menu is different everyday, and you can sign up to get email updates so they will email you the menu each day. Awesome place to eat!

Leave it to Sodexho to mess up a salad. Or a burrito. Or a stir-fry. Or chili. Seriously, this is a nice looking cafe, at a $500B+ investment firm. You'd think they would try not to poison the execs, and maybe even branch out a bit. The menu hasn't changed in 5 years, and everything they make has this weird metallic aftertaste. The same industrial chicken is used in everything. It's this or $11 at Whole Foods across the street. I hate market hours.

I met up with a friend for lunch today since I had a good experience with coworkers a couple weeks prior. We each decided to get the lemongrass chicken rice bowl since it was the special of the day. When we received our bowls, we were shocked at how little the portion size was! The bowl itself was already small, and the contents inside were barely half filled; I could see the bottom of my bowl! The one green vegetable was even bigger than total amount of chicken in the bowl. We thought maybe the quality of the food would make up for the deficient portion size; nope! The almost nonexistent chicken tasted like mall food court grilled chicken and the rice tasted bland. The lady offered us "sweet and sour sauce" which tasted more like lemongrass sauce, better yet, watered down fish sauce lemongrass sauce if it should be called that at all. For $12 plus tax this bowl was a joke and we definitely left hungry.Would I return back? Possibly to give the place another chance, but I will definitely consider all other local food options first.

Update (April 2019):Added new East side of cafe, doubling seating and servicing capacity, with state-of-the-art order management system (order from any of 3 kiosks and watch "keno boards" or receive text when your order is ready). Also offers high-end barista station (at much lower prices than Starbucks or Peet's). New decor has a much more modern look, with plenty of "soft seating" and TV monitors. "Old"/West side continues to offer great variety of lunch options, though the Grille and Seasonal stations have moved to the new/East side, along with new Performance Bowl and Melt stations. Year-ago review:Bon Appetite (also serve Tesla, Google, etc.) handles the food service at this excellent corporate cafe. Wide variety of offerings and quality ingredients. Not a fancy restaurant, but it's very hard to beat the quality-price ratio (subsized) if you're in the area. Safely factor of frequent guests from the San Mateo PD and Kaiser health center represent a nice bonus.

I eat at the Franklin Templeton Cafe every weekday, and I am never disappointed with my meal. It's always at least good, and often great! I am a particular fan of their salmon, their flatbreads, and their flank steak dishes. Hard to go wrong.Service is quick and so is checkout. They make your dish right in front of you. There are enough options in the daily rotation to make a quick and confident choice, but not so many as to be daunting. There are consistent options too, such as hamburgers, quesadillas, paninis, pizza, and salads.As for downsides or areas for improvement, sauce selection is pretty much exclusively limited to soy sauce, ketchup, and hot sauce. This is not so bad as the meals are usually well seasoned and sauced. The complimentary self-serve water in the cafeteria area is always infused with fruits or vegetables, which is sometimes refreshing, but there is no plain water unless you buy it bottled. Dine-in trays sometimes have wash water on them when you go to pick them up, or flakes of suspicious material, so I put them back one out of three or four times. If reusing dishes is a worry, you can get any meal to go.Overall a healthy, tasty, and affordable experience with an excitingly curated variance each day.