Mrs T’s Cafe

Cute little mom and pop place with ample seating. My coworkers love coming here and getting a DIY plate. I on the other hand, come here for their bibimbap! Usually I order to go, but last week a friend wanted to have lunch so I took her here. Ordered the beef bibimbap and my friend got the same.
When the food came, it was not served in a stone bowl. Therefore, there wasn’t any of that delicious, crispy rice on the bottom that I wanted. It was served in a plastic bowl. Portions were decent and the bulgogi beef was cooked perfectly. And there was a fried egg! Yay! The vegetable mix was a bit greasy though. They also give you a little container of hot sauce on the side so you can add it to your liking. However, they charge extra if you ask for more hot sauce.
Overall it tasted like what a bibimbap should taste like. Will be back next time to try their DIY plates that my coworkers rave so much about.

My coworkers all frequent this place and I just don’t get it. The owners are nice, but the food is pretty inconsistent with quality and there are better spots to grab lunch in the area.
Most of their created, mixed dishes have some strange ingredient in it (pasta with bacon and… cauliflower?!) or one of the ingredients is soggy or tough to chew (the breaded chicken is pretty much unpalatable). I can get most of the same dishes or other, better variations between Wildflower Café and Lee’s a few blocks down.
The bread they use for their sandwiches is dry and falls apart — Lee’s Deli has much better wheat and sourdough. And chicken and mayo mixed together does not count as chicken salad makings.
Unfortunately, to get a great sandwich or salad bar, it requires walking quite a bit further from the office, but I can’t bring myself to pay the same amount for an unsatisfying lunch just to shave time off a lunch expedition.

The Best salad bar! Tasty and healthy choices and as far as I can tell, the ingredients look very fresh. I find most of other salad bar in FiDi make food quite salty and dressing heavy, but this place is an exception. Highly recommended.

Standard lunch salad bar fare. They tend to have a pretty good selection, but it shifts around from time to time, which can make it not super dependable if you just love one thing or another. Staff always seems very flustered at lunch time, which doesn’t make for the best mood, but I usually do take away so its not that big of a deal.

They offer so much selection at lunchtime from sandwiches to salads to korean dishes to sushi. But be careful because they charge by weight and the last time I went in there, my lunch box ended up to be $ 15 and I wasn’t even totally full afterwards. I guess I picked all the heavy food items.

To be honest, I came in not expecting much. And that’s usually when something knocks your socks off, when you have no expectations or assumptions.
I tried their pan-​asian salad bar. Grabbed some zaru soba, a cali roll, snap peas, fried chicken and some other stuff and it was all really good. Flavors were nicely balanced and the price is pretty standard for FiDi.
Not a bad alternative to the typical salad bar.

Not a fan! Our office is close by and so it is an easy place to grab food. We have been at this office location for a year and slowly one-​by-​one people at my office have seen things go on there that are not to our liking and can really ruin an appetite. It is kind of a standing office joke how terrible this place is. Some people still go and enjoy their diverse salad bar but it is hard to convince many people to go with you. The only saving grace is that they have poppy seed Costco muffins individually wrapped (cost marked up of course) so on rare occasion I will venture in their for one of those but that is about it. Not worth your time or money.

This poorly lit «Café» does have an espresso machine, but they won’t make you a latte, even though there is a sign that says they offer them. The two women in the back kitchen both saw me standing at the counter this morning, waiting to order, bot neither of them came out to help me. Finally the other person waiting to order called back into the kitchen to have them come out. The space is huge but rarely have I seen more than 3 people in there. The salad bar is okay, but the lighting is so bad in there that the food looks rather unappealing. It always seems like everyone is too busy to help you, and they could definitely benefit from being nicer to their customers. Sadly, it is the closest place to my office and when I need a quick sandwich, it’s where I go… however, the 5 minutes I spend waiting for someone to help me could be better spent walking up to the natural food store on Grant. The turkey burger *is* good, but this place is just weird.

Mrs. T’s is an enigma. Superficially, it’s odd and misplaced, with outdated décor and furniture better suited to a retirement home in Boca Raton than this stately stretch of Montgomery Street in historic Jackson Square. The framed art would live comfortably in any cookie cutter dive or pizza joint. Old school black and white photo of construction workers lunching on a skyscraper beam perched high above Manhattan? Check. Random tacky still life with lilies? Check. Western landscape in 80s oil colors with shiny gold frame? They’ve got that one, too.
And then there’s a long buffet counter that seems relatively popular, but, to my eye, not particularly appetizing.
Service is also sometimes spotty and it’s often impossible to get the manager to stand still long to take your order.
Sounds terrible so far. So why four stars?
The place seems run by a Korean family, including a no-​nonsense grandmotherly doyen holding down the kitchen. Their bibimbap won’t get them a Michelin any time soon, but I can’t get enough of it. The chicken is always cooked just right and is super-​tasty. It comes served with a perfectly poached egg that oozes delicious gooey sunshine that pulls the rice, meat and vegetables together and provides a smooth, creamy counterpoint to the hot sauce spice.
The turkey burger is another DL hit.
I can’t speak to anything else on the menu and the interior is a solid 1-​star affair. But these two dishes are cheap and tasty and merit a solid 3.5 to 4 stars.

The first time I tried this place I was so disappointed. No, I was seriously grossed out.
After being ignored for a good couple of minutes, I finally get my order taken by a grumpish looking dude (Mr T.?) The prices are reasonable, I ordered a veggie omelet. Came with toast and hash browns.
I took my order to-​go and went back to my desk at work.
The paper bag my food was in was soaked thru with grease by the time I walked to my work which is just a few doors down.
While eating my food, I found a long black hair. That combined with the massive amount of grease almost made me throw up right then and there.
So flash forward a few months. I’m at work. Craving a good ol American breakfast. Dangerous for someone trying to lose a few pounds!
Anyways, my coworker is always eating at this place and convinces me to give it another try.
I go in and Mr T is already at the counter helping someone else, so I am helped right away. I am charged .50 cents for extra cheese. No biggie.
I wait while my food is being prepared. I am actually kind of afraid to look back into the kitchen. There is this weird noise coming from back there that could either be
1. An industrial sized grease sucker.
2. An irate man with a giant cheese grater grating up huge potatoes… or rocks.
3. The sound of a giant fryer boiling over grease onto an electrified floor.
While I was waiting another customer came in and stood at the register for minutes before being acknowledged.
Anyways, I get my food. I ask for tobaso this time and Mrs. T waves her hand in the general direction of the emptied out salad bar.
I wasn’t ever thanked or treated in anyway with niceties.
Again, bag is falling apart due to too much grease.
Hash browns are drowning in grease!
I didn’t get the cheese I ordered.
No hair this time.
No jam for my toast.
The food was just a soggy, greasy mess.
I will never eat here again.

Pretty standard. Typical little café like a Lee’s deli

The sandwiches are okay, just like your homemade sandwiches. The Korean rice dish (bi bim bab) was horrible… I saw Mrs T (?) spraying some white powder over the food (god knows if it is garlic salt or MSG) but the dish has an unnatural explosion of flavor, and the rice was grey in color after it was heated up on the dirty grill…
Despite the sub-​standard food, relatively high price tag, and bad service I’ve been to Mrs T’s Café quite a few times in the spirit to support small businesses around my block. Yet I will never return after what I saw yesterday. A poor guy came inside to beg for food, and was rejected by Mr. T. I wanted to help out so I ordered a bagel and a coffee for the poor guy while he was waiting outside the café. Instead of giving me any discount, Mr. T charged me to the penny. Oh well, Mr. T, I tolerated your food just to support the local businesses, but if you are not giving back to the local community, there is no reason for me to come back again!

OK. I keep giving this place a chance, but I am consistently disappointed. And believe me, my expectations are low to begin with. I can deal with the unfriendly dude who runs the place, and my order is often incorrect, but overall the food is just very sub-​standard. Clearly they are not using even minimally good ingredients and the place is filthy. I always take issue with employees not washing their hands between tasks involving clean up and cash transactions and food preparation/​handling. Seriously gross. And I’m not that precious about cleanliness either… I will kiss a cat full on the mouth — no problem. But I almost walked out while watching my order to be prepared. I still ate it and got the full on heebie jeebies.
I wonder how long it will take me to forget how disappointed and disgusted I was and go back. Until then I would rather go to McDonald’s. And that’s scraping the bottom of the lunch barrel for me.

I work just a few blocks away from Mrs. T’s. And this place isn’t that bad. i mean I don’t exactly live for anything they have there, and it’s really no place special. But on those work days when nothing seems to be going right and I decide that I deserve a cheeseburger, this is where I go. It’s no frills, but you get what you pay for. And you don’t get gut-​punched by their prices like Pickles down the street.
Try to avoid the rush if you plan on ordering from the menu and not sticking with the salad bar, otherwise you might find yourself waiting a while.
But all in all if you work not far from Mrs. T’s it’s worth check out at least once.

It’s hump day, and my coworker was craving Korean food. (A korean craving korean food… go figure.)
Anywho, as a new transplant to the Financial District, I’m slowly coming to realize that the area doesn’t exactly have a wide variety of food. Or maybe I’m just not looking hard enough, but I digress…
Back to the korean food craving coworker…
So I hop on Unilocal to find the closest Korean food joint to my office… lo-​and-​behold, Mrs. T Café pop’s up… odd though, it’s a sandwich shop-​slash-​salad bar-​slash-​breakfast joint. That’s owned by Koreans. And serves 2 Korean dishes (bibimbap and bulgogi).
So off we went, walked in, ordered a couple bowls of bibimbap.
Now, this place not being an actual korean restaurant, the bibimbap was of mediocre quality. Decent portion though. Odd choice of marinated chicken.
All in all, not bad. I will be back to try the other foods though.

I usually get the salad bar here. I like that there is a wide variety of items on the salad bar.
However, the sandwiches are sometimes off. I recently got a cheese steak here, and while I wasn’t expecting a Philly original from this sort of place, I didn’t expect gristle in the meat. It was kinda gross.

I’ve pretty much only ever had breakfast here. I work at an office near here about a few times a month and I always get a toasted bagel with scrambled eggs, turkey or chicken and avocado to go. It’s pretty good. Good enough for me to always order the same thing every time any way.
The mocha is not bad here either and I’m ridiculously picky about that. Just sweet enough with a good balance of chocolate and espresso.

If ever a restaurant merited exactly 3 stars, nor more, no less, it is Mrs. T’s. I think honestly you could calibrate this site’s reviews by stating canonically that Mrs. T’s is the essence of 3-​star-​dom. The décor is startlingly average. It looks like a company cafeteria. The food is startlingly average. I had the steam table food, and everything tasted exactly like it should; no better, no worse. The sushi was grocery store sushi. The noodles were fine, but could have come from a box. The brussel sprouts had a touch of character. I would have been startled by how average the service and prices were, but fortunately for me, I had now calibrated my expectations and was able to make my saving throw to avoid being startled.
Go here if, like me, you work next door and need a quick lunch. Otherwise, don’t.

Wow. $ 10 doesn’t get you nearly as much at pay-​by-​weight salad/​lunch bars as it used to, but the food here is good. There are a lot of healthy options, and several high quality hot dishes that change throughout the week.
This is a great place if you only have a a little time to spend on lunch and you want more than just a sandwich. (They sell sandwiches here, but I’ve always opted for the buffet.)

Yum! Mrs. T’s is a regular lunch spot for the Financial District crowd and it’s good. For their salad bar, you can count on all kinds of pastas, salad fixings, fresh fruit, meatballs, tofu dishes, Vegetable and gyoza tempura and the list goes on. From my experience, everything is fresh and delicious.
I must admit, I haven’t ordered much from the actual kitchen, but it’s best to call ahead of time after 12 o’clock when the rush starts. And if you can get out of the office by 11:45, you’ll find few people and a ton of selections just for you. Get there by 1pm and the Salad Bar will be skimpy.
And If you don’t get out there in time, count on waiting in line. But for quality and affordability, it will be worth it.