Eat Street Cafe

Being here many times over the years. It has probably been the go to place for people visiting or working at MGH. It has a large space with many options, most if not all of which have labels of their nutrition values. The price used to be a bit lower than a typical café and perhaps still is, but I felt that the quality as well as the taste seemed to be declined recently.

After my follow up appointment at the Burn Center, my stomach started to growl. My wheelchair assistant told me about this cafeteria located in the basement. I love how this place is wheelchair accessible. During lunch, they offer pizza, salad bar, panini station, carving station, entrees, and soups. I was overwhelmed by my choices and senses but eventually got Maple and Rosemary Chicken with a side of mashed potato with gravy and carrots with chives. After lunch, I was craving something to cool me off so I stopped by the ice cream parlor. They had five flavors to choose from — Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate, Maple Walnut, and Coffee. After taking a few work calls, I was craving something to take with my medicine and was faced with two choices — homemade Coconut Crème Cake and Pecan Pie. The Coconut Crème Cake tasted like a regular vanilla cake with toasted coconut.

Eat street café at MGH is awesome… I have had the pleasure of eating there many times as a loved one undergoes therapy at MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL aka MGH… If I worked at mass general or nearby I would mostly eat there… Selection, price, efficiency, flavor etc is outstanding… Morning breakfast bar which turns into lunch and later salad bar is incredible!.. pizza rivals the best the north end has to offer. coffee rivals Dunkin Donuts flavor!

Thinnest bacon strips ever!
Nice and crispy! Lots for $ 1.50
Muffins almost large tops $ 1.20 flavorful.
Coffee good

The cafeteria at MGH is amazing… the food is always great, there’s plenty of options.
However, I have been here a few times for breakfast, and I absolutely love the bacon egg and cheese on a croissant/​english muffin. I have to say though, that whenever I go and the young gentleman is making it, he takes a very long time, overcooks the bread, and never really lets the cheese melt. There are a few other people who work the grill, and they are much better at it. I’ve been late to an appointment before because I thought that getting a breakfast sandwich would be fast (which is usually is if this man doesn’t make it).
Otherwise, fantastic cafeteria!

Very orderly. Crowded, but the lines moved quickly. And the food was really inexpensive!
Everything is organized by its nutritional value. Green means you’re good to go, Yellow means it’s not that great for you, and Red means there’s definitely a healthier option. But that doesn’t stop you from getting it, if you want!
I wish there were notable pricings on the chips and more of a juice selection.

Lots of choices but a madhouse at lunchtime. I’ve seen homeless people digging through the salad bar with bare hands, also taking left-​overs from the trash area. And everything’s unbearably salty, especially the soups (and the pizza, both toppings and crust).

This is an update. Today I decided to try pizza. $ 2 – 2.60/small slice. I waited and waited and waited… wasnt sure if pizzaria closed… no workers were in sight. Finally an employee decided to serve me my slice. The pizza dough was soft, undercooked and warm. When I asked to heat up my slice (I like my pizza dough well done and crunchy, not soggy), I was given not only a mean look, but an attitude as well! Ouch, what a customer service! I am not eating their pizzas again! MGH should screen their food companies better! Maybe get in some new pizzeria with better recipes and friendlier employees. Because this pizza slice suuuuucked!
Result: Minus 1 star!

I’ve worked at MGH for the last 2 years. I’m there A LOT. And I’ve consumed most of my meals in this café-​teria. And having been a a lot of hospital cafeterias over the years, this is by far the most impressive.
They have a huge variety of food — including a pizza bar, rotisserie bar (I eat here most of the time — they often have 3 main items, such as turkey, ham, roast beef, marsala chicken, etc) and sides (including veggies, sweet potatoes, stuffing, all kinds of good stuff and fairly healthy), a grill, a cold sandwich bar, giant salad bar, softserve ice cream bar, real ice cream (with great flavors and cheesecakes, etc) bar, and more.
Overall, great selection, good quality, good taste, fairly reasonable prices — always know I’ll be leaving with something I like.
They are also focusing on the healthy side — putting calories on stuff and labeling it according to healthiness: green, yellow, or red based on fat and calories. Really progressive, espeically for a hospital — where they should focus on this but never do.
ALso, their desserts are great — the cookies and cakes especially. In my view, the best cakes are the white with orange frosting, white with strawberry, chocolate with chocolate.
Anyway, I sometimes shoot in here to grab something quickly that tastes good and is healthy, even when I’m not working. The convenience of a cafeteria without the crappy food. Thumbs up

I discovered the Eat Street Café at MGH Boston
after I suffered a serious accident in 2006.
I attended both physical therapy & the pain clinic there,
and decided I might as well treat myself to lunch afterwards.
WHAT A SURPRISE to find such a HUGE VARIETY
of hot dishes, sandwiches and salad bar items…
and all the meal options CHANGE EVERY DAY!
LOCATION: Ellison Building, lower level
HOURS: Open Monday through Friday, 6:30 am to 8:00 pm; Saturday,
Sunday and Holidays, 7:00 am to 7:00 pm
THE DEAL: To hear a recording of the daily menu, call 617−724-MENU.
The cafeteria is wheelchair accessible. You can request assistance with getting your meal by alerting a staff member or by pushing the red button located at the main entrance to the cafeteria (near the stacked trays), on the right-​hand wall.

Love this place but I think I already reviewed another East Street… how come there are two? huh, Unilocal

I’d never thought I would give hospital cafeteria food these many stars. I am impressed with the variety of selections. Remember I am comparing against other self serve outlets and by far has the best selection.
What I really like is the color codes to tell you what the healthy and not so healthy selections are.
Very reasonable prices. If I lived in Boston near here, I would be a regular — scary as that may sound.

for hospital food, eat street café is pretty good. in fact, i would probably go there even if i don’t work in the vicinity if seeking food in the mgh area as the prices are so reasonable due to subsidies.
for breakfast, the menu is varied — from healthy yogurt and fruit, pastries and bagels, to the griddle where you can bring said bagel to get a made-​to-​order egg and cheese sandwich, made-​to-​order omelettes, and the very quick line for regular scrambled eggs, cheesy scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, sausage patties, and regular pork sausage. this same quick line also provides the chicken liver delicacy on friday. they also used to have baked ham on fridays, and to my disappointment, stopped this practice. depending on who serves, the serving size can be pretty substantial.
at another station, we cannot forget the breakfast pizza. scrambled eggs, your choice of sausage, bacon or no meat, with a layer of melted cheese on top of pizza dough. it’s definitely color coded red for «select very little of» on the healthy foods to choose from scale located throughout the space, but a must try. juice and drinks are abundant, as well as a coffee station, but i’d rather get my coffee at coffee central upstairs.
for lunch, the menu is just as varied as breakfast, with the usual salad and soup bar, burgers, pasta and the daily specials. the daily specials, whether it would be fish and chips, chicken fingers, what have you, are abundant in serving size. and they have the usual normal pizza at this time too, after 10am when the breakfast hours end.
with the amount of traffic here, eat street is also the model of efficiency, but still best to avoid the shift change times. and the behind the scenes areas of where they prepare food are very clean too.
and best of all, there is a sundae bar after the cashiers! a nice treat for a great price.

Well, it’s a hospital cafeteria, so the food is obviously not the MOST spectacular, but it’s good, there’s tons of options, and they’re all really inexpensive. Well, compared to anywhere else to get lunch in the area. The salad bar is actually wonderful, and so reasonably priced. I bought a huge salad the other day with tons of different toppings for $ 4.00. If I bought the same thing at Whole Foods, it would have been at least twice the price. Give it a try, mostly because the prices are so great!

Great selection of tasty food at very very reasonable prices. I work near the MGH, not for the hospital, but I go here a few times a week because it is so much cheaper than any other food options in the area and I know I’ll be able to find some tasty vegetarian eats. Only things I don’t like is that they use styrofoam trays and plates and they seem to have a problem with getting the eating areas cleaned of crumbs/​spills in a timely manner.

Cheeseburgers! Pizza! Salads with real Bacon Bits! Good Ice Cream!
Automatically 1 Star for Hospital Cuisine of the World. The best part of this hospital Café is the «Self-​service options» Salad bar, Soups, Sandwiches. They give you Chicken, Eggs, REAL Bacon Bits, Oriental Noodles, Grilled Veggies. All ways to make salad FUN! Great variety from Pizza to Baked Haddock with Carrots and Broccoli. Cheeseburgers. Ice cream stand. GET Ice Cream here before you leave. It’s $ 2 – 3 less than the next ice cream place which isn’t much in Boston! Economical and tastes just fine!

I had an awesome breakfast pizza there last week. It was a very good size with just the right amount of scrambled egg and sausage and cheese and everything else. I would go back just for that someday even if I have no reason to be in the hospital.
I had a really good cinnamon roll as well but I was so full from the pizza that I didn’t need it (and shouldn’t have picked it up).

Not bad for a hospital cafeteria. I frequently have breakfast there, and they have a pretty good variety: omelets, eggs, french toast, home fries, three kinds of sausages, breakfast pizzas, fruit, cerial, soda, juice, etc. Everything they serve is fairly good, except for the scrambled eggs. They do use styrofoam plates that kind of melt when hot food is added, and I think they should switch to paper (for the environment, and maybe health reasons — the whole melted plastic pvc thing.). Food is reasonably priced. Atmosphere is that of a typical cafeteria, not that nice, but informal enough that you can sit there for quite a while reading or whatever. Breakfast does end at 10a.m. After that, Pizza is usually the only food available until lunch.

For some reason, when I worked at the General, I frequently «forgot» to make lunch at home, and breakfast for that matter. Eat Street is good, people! The salad bar, soups, sandwich section, pizza section, grilled meats area, even sushi once a week. And then when the day is going wicked rough, you can get a frappé at the ice cream counter.
I think it’s so funny what Jane S said «This is the mother of all Boston hospital cafeterias. But I’m not sure this mother can cook.» I worked there about 10 years ago, and during that time the head of Nutrition Services was featured on one of the National News programs as a «Person of the Week» b/​c the food and the options were *that* good. In fact, as an employee, you always knew when it was a local holiday b/​c the traffic in Eat Street slowed down *that much more*.
Also as Jane S mentioned, there are plenty of choices there, healthy and unhealthy. But it’s up to you to decide which you want. Whenever I go to MGH, I always stop in for a yummy treat at Eat Street. It’s good people, I swear!

This is the mother of all Boston hospital cafeterias. But I’m not sure this mother can cook. Granted, they never close and feed an incredible diversity of people everyday but who eats confetti vegetables and grilled liver (today’s hot menu items)? The prepared hot meals for lunch and dinner are the standard uninspired and unhealthy hospital fare. Lots of fried food. I guess this is a business driver for the cardiologists!
That said, there are healthy alternatives. A broiler station provides decent chicken sandwiches and burgers… and veggie burgers. When you go here, you need to order your sandwich through a glass window and wait while your meat cooks. This provides ample opportunity for observing the hospital industrial complex in a dark and confusing basement cafeteria.
The other healthy alternative is an expansive salad bar, but watch out, its not the food that’s dangerous here, its the people. Its not rare to see a person grab handful of food with their dirty hands from the crocks in the salad bar and despite the availability of tongs and existence of sneeze guards.