Hours: 11:00-5:00 p.m. Wed-Sun; Open until 8:00 p.m. on Thursday nights.

Despite its proximity to the Gates of Hell, the Cool Café is aptly named. Everything about this quirky, organic bistro is lukewarm: the food, the service and even the decor of the Jane Pearson & John D. Leland Family room in the Cantor Arts Center. The aggregate effect leaves this wayfaring Stanford student feeling a little bit tepid herself.

Of the Stanford campus eateries, Cool Café feels the least scholastic, due perhaps to its largely non-Stanford clientele. The most obvious indication of such clientele is the prices; few things on the chalkboard menu are under $9. Of course, the extra expense reflects an attention to quality that a Stanford student won’t find in his or her local dining hall. Cool Café uses local, seasonal and organic ingredients, and its menu changes to reflect the seasonality of their produce. Knowing that the vegetables in your watery black bean soup are organic, however, doesn’t make them taste any better. Trust me.

The café itself is quiet and understated. Only one wall is painted (a deep eggplant color), and there are no more than twelve tables in the small room. A collection of black-and-white photographs on the wall illustrates the food-making process. All of the silverware, napkins and condiments are stacked neatly on a wire shelf to the right of the entrance. You place your order at the front counter, and then take your number to your table, where the food is brought to you with relative swiftness.

The menu’s evenly split between salads and sandwiches with a respectable variety of vegetarian options in both categories. The meat lover would also be pleased at the mere mention of “natural leg of lamb” and “beef burger” in such a seemingly demure lunch selection. After some deliberation, I ordered the Café Combo: half of the turkey sandwich and a bowl of the black bean soup. My friend ordered the Chutney Chicken Salad, described on the menu as a “medley of free range chicken, water chestnuts, and celery in a light dressing with curry yogurt dressing.” We took our number “11” to a table near the window for a sweeping vista of the Keck Science building.

My turkey sandwich was simple but pleasantly experimental with thick, tender slices of Coleman natural turkey between a layer of tangy honey mustard and avocado. I removed the Swiss slice, but fans of the cheese might have appreciated that even this was organic (from Clover Farms). The wheat bread, though of the sliced variety, was flavorful and nutty. The black bean soup also earns points for creativity with its unexpected segments of green beans and chunky dices of potatoes and carrots, but the consistency disappointed me. Black bean soup, by convention, should be thick enough to blur the line between soup and solid. Cool Café makes theirs a little smoother.

The presentation of the chutney chicken salad came as a pleasant surprise. A globe of chicken salad rested on the right end of the plate, while across the central, green leaf assortment, two slices of Bay Bread organic baguette balanced the ensemble. Around the edge of the plate, the chef had sprinkled random, organic vegetables—a slice of beetroot here, a violet sprout of cauliflower there.

In my friend’s final assessment, the salad was overall agreeable, although perhaps not worthy of its $10 price. Once we paused to contemplate the dollar amount we are routinely charged by Stanford Dining for our lackluster lunches at Lag, however, we realized that Cool Café’s chutney chicken was more of a bargain than we thought.

In spite of a refreshing commitment to organic food, as well as energetic innovations on the traditional salad and sandwich maneuvers, the Cool Café leaves you saying, “Yeah, but...” Its menu prices are too expensive for the ordinary student lunch, and its location in Cantor makes it inaccessible for hectic weekdays. But if you’re looking for a quiet corner of campus to show your mother on Parents’ Weekend, Cool Café may be the ideal locale. For everyday student life, however, this café plays it too cool.