An Uncommon Cafe

One of the worst in DC. Speed and accuracy are not a goal of this place… getting the most bang out of mass-​produced food and nickle-​and-​diming customers is. Working in the same building, I notice how fresh food will be placed out on a Monday morning, discounted in the afternoon, and then reheated and served the next morning at full price. Instead of an ice machine, they have a small lunch-​sized cooler they fill somewhere and keep an ice scoop in… unsanitary, cheap, and a health code violation. And seriously, $ 0.25 for a cup of ice with the purchase of their warm soda bottles? And when you go to pay, the staff can never seem to operate their registers… cards need to be swiped repeatedly or they ask for money based upon the subtotal, only to inform you that you need to get out your wallet again to pay more. Unreal.
CVS and about 10 restaurants serve the same stuff in a 2 block radius, so consider a healthy walk to get your food instead.

There’s absolutely nothing «uncommon» about this place — just another downtown hot bar. Food tastes fine, but it isn’t really very high quality and is definitely not what I would call «light» outside of the salad bar. Heavy, greasy and salty — which I can appreciate on occasion!

Their food are very greasy, made me sick and ended vomited with General Tso’s chicken and salad. I wouldn’t recommended if you would eat any fried food or salad. Just not right with quality of food. I would rather go somewhere else.

It’s the same source of good food at Harry S. Truman cafeteria and dining room. I know paying by the pound may be a bit pricey, but this is the first place where I have a choice of oatmeal, cream of wheat, and grits HOT and ready to eat! PLUS you can choose a made to order breakfast?!? AND they have coffee and coffee drinks?
Now for lunch – I could eat there every weekday and not have the same thing twice. They have two soups available – and one can grab a soup while getting breakfast. i wish there was an Uncommon Café near my home – I wouldn’t have to cook! ;-)

This is one of my favorite lunch spots in the Ballston area. It’s an affordable buffet with lots of salad and vegetarian options. The selection rotates, so it never gets boring. I’m a fan of the salmon when they have it, and their tabbouleh is pretty good. I also love the cucumber mango salad. This is the place to go when you want something quick, cheap, and healthy.

Good place to get a coffee or lunch. The food is priced by the pound (except the sandwiches and burgers). Lots of seats inside and outside. I come here for coffee and breakfast.
Good place.

3.4 Stars.
I took advantage of the salad bar for a non-​coma inducing bite before a long meeting and training session nearby. I didn’t like any of the meat items or the Chinese food fare presented so stuck with the original green salad, cool cucumbers, broccoli, and a few tofu cubes. Drinking only water with my greens, I spent around $ 5. And yes, you will see Federal employees take up 90% of the seats there. After all, you are in the national’s capital where all of the federal agency headquarters are based. I’d go there again for lunch as the price is right and I can be in and out in a flash.

A cheesy, overpriced buffet that is filled with federal employees, but it gets the lunch job done well. Or breakfast. Or coffee and dessert break. Basically, you are covered during your routine 8 – 5. There are lots of hot and cold options, ethnic choices, and of course, the ubiquitous salad bar. But, stay away from the latter and opt for a custom-​made panini, vegetarian selection, or the Asian stir-​fry. Don’t be too picky; after all, it is a very common buffet.

Pay-​by-​weight fairly eclectic buffet style fare that is overpriced and mediocre. Only worth it if you can’t walk the 5 – 10 minutes to dozens of better lunch options in the neighborhood.

It’s an ok place. No major complaints except that they need a better variety — for the past few months they’ve had the same items in the buffet. I’m rather sick of it. They offer a 30% discount between 2:30 — 3:30pm.
They do offer free wi-​fi (that’s great!) and have a pretty good breakfast selection, as well as a coffee bar, and ice cream (the individually packed ice creams you’ll find at your local 7 – 11).

Uncommon Café? Maybe not so much, but it does the job. Echoing others, this is your standard lunch buffet. Salad bar, fruit, soups, maki sushi with a whole lot of rice, greasy Chinese-​y food, fried things, hot bar items, prepackaged snacks… you’ve seen it all before.
The selection is pretty good. The whole roasted turkey is nice, but the positioning is a little awkward and some people don’t seem to be very good carvers. I think it would be better if they precarved at least part of it so you can get some good slices if the person before you does a bad job.
They also have a griddle in the back for breakfast, made to order sandwiches, and a case of panini that they’ll put in the press for you. The sandwiches I’ve tried have been pretty good.
They have a sign that indicates hot bar items are 30% off from 2 — 3 or something like that, but I’m not sure I’d want to get something that may have been sitting around for several hours and is probably all dried out. The outdoor seating setup is quite nice when the weather is good.

Your typical DC «weigh and pay» with a few notable exceptions. This place caters to everyone with a rotating selection of salads, soups, chinese style dishes and more traditional fare. There is also a sandwich bar in the back if you don’t want to go the buffet route.
Daily fresh roasted turkey (that you carve yourself) with all of the trimmings is an unusual item. You can accompany this with mac and cheese, mashed taters and gravy, and vegetables.
The fried chicken here is superb, and this is coming from a southern boy who views fried chicken as an art form. It’s rare that you find fried chicken that is actually crisp and flavorful on a buffet line, but this place has it on the line every day.
A great place for a weekday lunch.

What’s funny is that restaurants like An Uncommon Café –variety buffet-​style, weigh and pay cafeteria joints – are becoming the most COMMON new establishments in business districts where top on people’s list are variety and speed. Quality and originality? Those are for the weekends. In fact this joint is all the more common because, of course, it’s part of a chain.
Snobbishness aside, the warm colors, leather sofas and gleaming wooden floors add a coziness, and the food is fresh. A really nice touch was that they had a whole roasted turkey with the typical sides, so you could have Thanksgiving dinner for lunch, while your friend/​colleague has Sechuan chicken and egg rolls and another chooses Ravioli in sun dried pesto with a side of spinach salad in a bacon and raspberry vinaigrette. OR you can dine alone and have a combination of all three (hoping you don’t run into anyone you know). It’s that kind of place.
You can get breakfast here, and pick up some gourmet teas and cookies on the way out. They serve Seattle’s Best Coffee, which doesn’t compare to Swing’s down the street — but then nothing does.
The clientele: Toss up your plastic fork and it will most likely hit a World Banker. Its location makes it more like an alternative cafeteria for the 8000 people who are sick of the one they have inside the main complex but don’t feel like sacrificing the time or cash for a real quality meal elsewhere.
BONUS: FREE WI-​FI. Finally. A place in the vicinity to get away from those chatty bureaucratic colleagues and get some actual work done. Until everyone gets the same idea.