Cafe Fresco

I was at Hotel 480 a couple of weeks ago for a conference. When the conference broke for lunch I was on my way out of the hotel trying to figure out what I wanted to eat when I got a huge whiff of great smelling food in the lobby. I tracked the smell down to this little extension of the hotel. The look of the place was pretty nice; there was a food place where you order and pay for your food (kind of similar to a cafeteria), the inside seating area had a neat urbane look to it, and the outside seating area was small, loud, and a little uncomfortable because everyone walking by is staring at your food, as well as the cab drivers standing around waiting for their next fare.
They had a decent selection for lunch, including sandwiches, soups, chicken, pizzas, salads, and some hot food options. I decided to go with a pasta with a pink sauce and no meat, so I ordered a side of chicken (which was about 3 – 4 small slices). The sides I chose were the mashed potatoes and cubed red potatoes (I really wanted potatoes that day). All this and a bottle of water cost me $ 20!
–Where to begin, the guy who gave me the pasta gave me 2 ladle scoops and most of it was sauce, I was expecting him to give me another scoop but he just stared back at me with a «what the hell else do you want» look. The pasta itself was nothing special, but the sauce was liquid and didn’t taste very good at all. I had to go searching in the sauce for more pasta, cause of the small portions they gave me.
–The chicken was dry and chewy. When I finally got done chewing my first piece my jaw was actually sore. I ended up not finishing the ridiculously over priced chicken because I just couldn’t torture myself like that anymore.
–The mashed potatoes with no gravy where actually very good. Nice buttery feel and melts in your mouth. The taste was good, but I don’t know if it’s because everything else was so horrible that it made the mashed potatoes seem like rock stars.
–The cubed red potatoes where disgusting. It was bland, insipid, unsavory, tasteless, gross, flavorless, and any other negative adjective you can think of applies. I felt like I was eating a raw potato, it was crunchy and not by design.
Going against my better judgment I went back the next day for lunch, all I wanted was a soup and sandwich; I figured it would be okay, these aren’t hard to make. WRONG! The soup was like drinking lukewarm water with a hint of broth. Vegetables in the soup were nothing spectacular nor were they too awful. The sandwich was small and lacking in everything, from meats to the vegetables. The only highlight of my second meal was the free bag of chips that came with my sandwich. This meal cost me a little less that $ 15!
Overall, don’t get tricked by the nice smell in the lobby or the décor, get out of there and spare yourself from torture. Take my word for it leave the hotel, cross Powell St., go to Lori’s Diner have a good tasting burger for less than $ 10, and be full all day. That’s what I did on the third day and I kick myself for not thinking about it earlier.
Add Stars:
+mashed potatoes (0.5)
+décor (0.5)
Minus Stars:
— –price!
— –food
— Ebenezer Scrooge’s mom working behind the counter
~MikeL

**Coffee Review Only**
Worst latte ever… espresso beans were burnt… way too strong… poor options for flavored syrup… the cashier was curt and rude…
This place only gets 3 stars because they serve a wide variety of food items… the pizza smelled delicious, but i’m sure as with all SF pizza, it tasted horrible…