The Capitol Cafe By Milo’s

The area around the statehouse is a wasteland for lunch options so I end up at Milos a lot. Admittedly, I really wish it wasn’t in the statehouse where you’re surrounded by pushy, out of touch politicians clamoring for the last chicken fingers basket but life isn’t often fair. The food options are plentiful and the daily specials ensure there’s an option no matter what you’re craving. The salads are fresh, large, and well worth the price (and I am not much for salads). Sometimes, they even surprise you with a modern dish such as a quinoa bowl. If you can find it in the basement, it’s well worth the wait.

If you liked it grilled, try this hidden spot in the crypt under the State Capitol building! The muffuletta sandwiches was perfectly toasted as was my companion’s grilled cheese. I really liked the olive tapenade on my sandwich. And, the soup, a tomato bisque, was very tasty.
Well worth the effort of getting away from the hotel and conference across the street and to mix with state staff, representatives and senators!

I love Milo’s! Everything is fresh and they take great care to get it right. The portions are generous – enough to take home. I enjoy the egg sandwiches, soups, specials, gyros… and list goes on. Even though they are located in Statehouse, people from other buildings frequent here because of the good food. And the staff is the BEST! I look forward to seeing them everyday!

Scrumptious food and service is always swift and polite!

The Capitol Café is «as good as it gets!» for weekday workday lunch. Here’s why (in no particular order):
1) Daily specials! Unlike other downtown lunch joints, I can’t get sick of it. And they’re available for preview online!
2) Since I work in the Huntington Center, I can get here without having to go outside. Utilizing Cbus’ underground tunnels makes me feel like a true and literal insider.
3) Fresh ingredients and preparation. Good flavor, hearty portions. Quality, man.
4) It’s inside the Statehouse! Which is awesome! I love the Statehouse, and the Capitol Café is a good excuse to go inside and wander around in the glory of it all– on a Tuesday.
Those benefits are awesome enough for me that I can overlook the cramped spaces, awkward layout of the codiments/​silverware statiton in the dining room, and sometimes inconsistent service.
My lunch partner always wants to get it to go, but it’s kind of annoying to have to wait around awkwardly in everyone’s way (plus the prep times from person-​to-​person can be inconsistent). And, especially for the non-​sandwich items, I like eating my hot, hearty food from a PLATE and not out of a styrofoam container at my desk after it’s had a chance to cool on my way back to my office. Eat in, folks!

The food here is really good, but the service has been going downhill…
This place has excellent specials, available online each week. The food is interesting, well-​prepared, and uses good ingredients. I’ve never been disappointed with the food. (Except the chips… they’re weird…). The staff are friendly and quick to take your order.
The prep-​time has been getting longer and longer, with more and more screwups. Today, a club sandwich took something like 12 minutes to come up — way too long for a busy lunch time. Order mix-​ups are also happening more frequently. It’s not bad enough to stop me from coming, but it is annoying. If you’re on the capital square, though, stop here for a meal.

If you’re not in the building, there really isn’t much of a reason to pop in here for, but if you are in the building, it’ll make a fine meal, they have a wide variety and it tends to be under 10 dollars a pop, they whip up café fare on a fast food timer. beware of lines, it is a small and cramped ordering space, so just make sure you let people know you have ordered.

Being in our state capital — IN our State Capitol — I figured they wouldn’t let our state’s policymakers go by with bad food. After all, it’s probably our tax dollars at work, anyway. I was right — at least on the food part, and particularly on the selection.
First off — get your meal TO GO. This is the reason for the 4, not 5, star review. Those familiar with the Statehouse call this section «the Dungeon» for a reason. Once you enter the Café, there are no windows, no light to the outside, and the entrances to the main hallway are largely blocked by support walls. Lighting is sufficient, so you’re in a poorly lit area, but it’s not worth anything to stay here unless you want to rub elbows with Ohio’s lawmakers.
The menu offers a great sandwich selection from grilled paninis to gyros to wraps and burgers and chicken sandwiches. Breakfast is also available with standard fare, omelets, breakfast burritos and sandwiches. And no menu is complete with a small assortment of salads and sides.
The cajun chicken panini I ordered was certainly worth the $ 7 tag, as it came with a bag of chips and a pickle spear, and the taste was delicious! The only downer of this sandwich was it was VERY salty in taste, and I’m guessing that it may have been something with their cajun spices, but who knows. I didn’t let it stop me from finishing the hefty lunch sandwich — chips were saved for another day.
The nice part about going into the café is going into the Statehouse. It’s certainly not your typical downtown «office» building, and it has some interesting parts to it including a map of Ohio on the floor, completely carved in marble, with the counties outlined and done in different marble from the ones next to it. So go here, get a sandwich, and get out on the Statehouse lawn where you can enjoy the sights and sounds of Broad & High… or not.

If you’ve ever worked in the Ohio Statehouse, like I did, you know about The Capitol Café. It’s kind of nice that the Statehouse offers a place to eat right inside, especially if you’re busy at work and don’t have time to go out to grab a bite to eat. But if you don’t work in the Statehouse, or aren’t visiting the Statehouse for some reason, there isn’t much reason to check this place out.
The Capitol Café sits right in the crypt of the Statehouse. Yes, the crypt. If you’ve ever been done there you’ll see why it’s called that. It’s not that scary down there, but it’s all brick walls, no windows, cold and kind of dark. Especially at night, but let’s not get into that. Because The Capitol Café is in the Statehouse, it doesn’t really have an address. Fun fact! for those who don’t know, the Statehouse does not have a street address. It is simply just, «The Ohio Statehouse.» But if you make your way inside, you’ll find that the café is kind of in the center of the Statehouse on the ground floor. There are many different ways to get in the Statehouse so I can’t really direct you, but it’s not hard to find despite the fact that the rest of that place can be one big maze.
There are menu signs outside the café so you can get an ideas of what you want before you go in. There is a regular menu featuring sandwiches, salads, french fries, burgers, wraps, etc. A pretty impressive selection. Then they also have daily specials that come with sides and a drink. And the prices really aren’t too bad. It can get a little expensive if you get a drink and a bag of chips or something with your meal ($ 8 – 10), but most places downtown have very similar prices.
Every dish on the menu is named after a famous Ohioan, like the Warren G. Harding Salad, or the Jack Nicklaus Sandwich. Kind of weird, and maybe a little creepy as you’re eating it, but I guess you could only really get away with something like that at the Ohio Statehouse, where it’s all about Ohio history. Maybe the kids who come visit on field trips find it fun.
Personally, however, I don’t find the food all that great. It tastes like cafeteria food. I didn’t come here much because it seemed like I could go somewhere and pay the same amount and get so much more flavor somewhere else.
For example, everyone was raving about the grilled cheese sandwich in my office one day. It was the café’s special for the day. I decided to check it out. The sandwich came with tomato soup and I suddenly got very excited for this comfort food I was about to consume. But it was so salty! The sandwich tasted like grease, cheese and salt and the tomato soup was the saltiest I’d ever had. And I don’t like salt. But other people seemed to like it a lot.
Another time I gave the William H. Taft Wrap a try. This was a chicken salad tortilla wrap. I don’t know what Taft has to do with chicken salad. But anyway, this was pretty good. It was tasty, but the wrap wasn’t all that big and it was almost $ 7 for that alone. So obviously I couldn’t afford to go to the café all that often.
When you walk into the café, you go up to a counter where the cook is preparing the meals and tell him what you want. He’ll make your food, hand it to you, and you move down the line and pick up any sides or snacks that you want. You get to the cashier, tell them what you ordered, and get a fountain drink if you want one. Then you can either take your food and get out of there or eat in the dining room which is right next to the café. There is also seating outside the café, which for some reason is made to look like patio-​style seating. But you’re still very much indoors. And you’re basically right out in the hallways of the Statehouse, then. Kind of weird. But if you go here at lunchtime you’ll find the dining room full of Statehouse employees, and you’ll probably even see a Senator or two.
If you’re a visitor, however, I don’t recommend coming during the lunch hour because it’s bound to get very crowded. The Capitol Café also serves breakfast, and can be busy in the morning. They serve stuff like biscuits and gravy, eggs, bagels, oatmeal, coffee, etc. I never had their breakfast but I’ve heard good things.
Shane’s Gourmet Catering makes the food for The Capitol Café right now, and they’ve been there for a while. But I remember when a different catering company was running the café. It wasn’t as good. So at least Shane’s does a pretty good job and has a really interesting menu. If you’re ever in the Statehouse for anything, give it a try. But definitely don’t go out of your way for this cafeteria-​style cuisine, because parking at the Statehouse is a nightmare (and costly) and the atmosphere isn’t very enjoyable. And since it’s in the Statehouse it’s really only open around breakfast and lunch hours on work days. But it’s a nice standby for Statehouse employees.