Arbuckle Cafe

Graduate School of Business

518 Memorial Way

Hours: Mon-Thurs: 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri: 7:30 p.m.-3: 30 p.m. Lunch is served from 11:00 am- 1:30 pm.

Descending the staircase in the atrium of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, the snaking serving lines, clamorous cacophony of conversation and horseshoe of florescent-lit food stations might initially remind you of your elementary school lunchroom. Here, the similarities end.

Arbuckle Café is quick, efficient and crowded. When I called to ask them preliminary questions (fancy phrasing for “hours”), the phone rang 20 times with no answer. At the time, I pictured servers lounging around chewing on their fingernails, uninterested in the phone jingling in the background. After watching the sandwich assembler and his streamlined, hurried movements, I realize that there’s simply no time to answer the phone. Every employee is out on the floor: pressing paninis, tossing salads and tenderly folding burritos.

Given this lunchtime pandemonium, I expected that the food itself would be lackluster. How good can a sandwich be when the assembler makes two or three in such rapid succession? Arbuckle surprises, however, in the freshness and vigor of its offerings. Food stations are clearly labeled. There’s a smoothie area, open salad bar, taqueria, panini press, deli (where the aforementioned sandwich assembler deftly builds a sandwich according to your specifications) and a feature “At Home” section. The latter has offerings that change on a daily basis. It is also here that the featured soups and salad can be located. If none of this suits your fancy, then there is also a shelved cooling unit next to the registers with packaged sandwiches, sushi, yogurt and other to-go items.

One of my friend opted for a turkey sandwich with the works. The sandwich’s appearance alone was impressive: two generous slices of nutty wheat bread and a flattened rainbow of fillings cut in half and set slightly askew in the plastic container. Given a choice between fruit and Caesar salad, my friend asked for fruit, and the server placed a small cup of grapes, melon and strawberry in the sighing mouth of the sandwich slices.

The sandwich, made of “sound fundamentals,” lacked a special sauce or any distinctive spin to separate it from a dozen other sandwiches across campus. Of course, this would have something to do with the way Arbuckle caters to the customer— if you don’t have the extemporaneous creativity to create a sauce with the ingredients behind the glass, there’s just not going to be one.

My other friend also ordered smoked turkey, but she had hers pressed with provolone, tomato, avocado, and lettuce on a French baguette as a grilled panini. After the first few bites, she admitted to having been intimidated by the overwhelming variety — from eggplants to roasted peppers to cranberry sauce — and her temporary paralysis when faced with such choice perhaps led her to make unimaginative selections. However, despite semi-blandness, she touted the quality flavor of each individual ingredient and said in sum, “This isn’t dining hall food.”

Because I have a rampant obsession with burritos (which I blame on Chipotle), I approached the taqueria. After waiting for a few minutes in the line, the taquerian (I think this is a fair assumption of his title) turned to me. It’s worth noting that he was beaming, as though he had stood there, passing the time all day with other burritos while secretly waiting to make mine. “What would you like today, young lady?” The ingredients are laid out a la Subway, and you can use words or simply point and grunt. It’s all the same to the taquerian, who heaps hefty helpings into the tortilla of your choice (plain, wheat and spinach) and then rolls it up with ease. I gestured to the marinated tofu and vegetables, black beans, various salsas and lettuce. I then seized the plate with eager hands and carried it five feet to the register. My friends trolled around the serving area a little more, perhaps scanning the wide variety of bottled drinks (I’d locked in on a delicious bottled root beer right away). The sandwich, panini and burrito were each under 6 dollars, which makes Arbuckle a stark contrast to its neighbor positioned directly across Palm Drive: the Cool Café.

On our way to sit down, we picked up some of the novelty “Spudware”: the icing on Arbuckle’s environmentally-conscience cake. This biodegradable cutlery is made of potato starch with a few other minority additives, so when you sort through your trash and recyclable products post-meal, the ending balance leaves you feeling like Captain Planet.

The only genuine problem you might come across during your visit to Arbuckle is the seating. Amid lunch-hour congestion, the only open area for my friends and me was the edge of the staircase, which we claimed with a shrug. We were soon enough distracted by food and conversation, though, and both of which were superb.