Lunch at Google

Have you heard the tales of the glorious Google campuses? Word has it that they’re magical lands where little elves write code while beautiful fairies dance around them.

I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting the original Googleplex in Mountain View, but I happen to work in the same building as Google in Manhattan. I first figured it out when one of the magical fairies accidentally got off the elevator on our floor and flittered through our office with her sparkling Google wand – performing web searches for everyone in sight.

The California Googleplex is rumored to have eight cafés, a basketball court, a free gym for employees, washers and dryers, massage rooms, a grand piano, roller hockey, a tree that actually grows money and a Fountain of Youth from which all employees can drink freely for immortality.

The smaller office in Manhattan is not quite as impressive, but it does have an amazing café that takes up one floor of our block-sized building. An amazing café that is FREE to employees, and to non-employees that get past the door by flashing the security guard. I, however, was not one of the flashers, at least not yesterday. I was legitimately snuck in by a friend of mine who’s a Google employee.

She gave me the tour of the free organic salad bar, the refrigerator with every beverage every created (free), the ceviche bar (free), the “cuisines of the world” bar (free), the “comfort food” bar (free) and more (and did I mention that everything is free?). Eventually I decided on the tuna tartare, wild grain rice and grilled Alaskan Sea Bass with miso reduction sauce, but not until after I’d juggled Andalusian baked oysters, skated through wasabi mashed potatoes and rolled around naked in rich chocolate mousse.

It was a lunch to be remembered. And also, it was all free. Time to start looking for a job at Google.