Ocean Terrace Cafe

Ordered two drinks at 2:44 the employee waited for several orders to stack up, then made them all at once. Did not get my drinks until 10 minutes later at 2:54. Seems like a cool place to eat your lunch but I would plan on brining your own.

Bring your own food. This is overrated and crazy expensive food. Dry sandwiches and chlorine washed eggs. If you want to spend all your money in one place - with staff that barely acknowledges you while they charge you almost $200 - this is the place.

Opens at 11AM so don't skip breakfast at home. How convenient is it to have this nice cafeteria restaurant right inside the museum? Very competitive prices to eating out in the streets at D.C. (which is expensive everywhere)...but you get a nice table and a chair and free glasses of water. I got sage roasted turkey breast with fresh cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and gravy for about $9 (you pay by the pound so keep that in mind on heavy selections). Staff were friendly enough and gave plastic cups to fill up with water at the water fountain. Hot fresh krinkle fries, very large chicken breast sandwiches, hamburgers, large flatbread pizzas ($15). Nice selection of above average desserts (ex. cheesecake, rich dark chocolate cake). Overall appreciate this place and find it a decent city stop. The only downside is no hand sanitizer anywhere at the entrance or inside the cafe and no restrooms nearby....which isn't ideal in a place with lots of runny-nose hand everywhere children.

Ordered a cheeseburger, as well as chicken tender and fries. Chef didn't even dry off shredded lettuce, which ended up making the bottom bun of my burger wet and soggy like play-dough, and the rest of the burger cold and unappetizing. They didn't even bother to melt the slice of cheese on top at all, like it came straight from the fridge. Nothing I ordered was warm. The 'Red velvet' cupcake was dry and tasted like flavourless cake with excessive food colouring and sugar. Was an awful experience. 1/5 stars.

The most outrageous prices. My sandwich claimed to have salsa on it, in reality it had a smear of tomato paste. The burrito (which we had hope in because of the weight) was 80% hummus. The deserts were decent but not $7.50ea decent. By far the biggest waste of money in DC.

The price of the food was so ridiculous. You’d imagine that perhaps they make all their money with gift shop purchases but, it seems that isn’t enough to sustain a museum… the food was disgusting as well. I had the chicken tenders and fries as well as the Alfredo pasta. The tenders were dry and the sauce for the pasta was watery. Do not come here for good, affordable food.

Your ham, salami, prosciutto, pepper sandwich had no salami, no prosciutto, no peppers. It did have mustard. The turkey in the turkey sandwich did not taste good. How do you expect people to trust the information displayed in your museum if you can’t correctly label a sandwich? It was also insanely overpriced. Nearly 17 dollars for a bad sandwich with two dollars of ingredients is horrible. We would have been better off chancing the food trucks outside the museum, or just starving.

Just a few years back, most of the Smithsonian museums weren’t worth eating at. That has changed - first with the Native American Museum, then the African American museum and now the Museum of Natural History. There are four signature bowls. You can add chicken, salmon, or tofu to any of them. The bowls are right at 10 bucks and it’s 3 bucks to add a protein. They also have sandwiches and desserts, a coffee bar that’s open until 5 and I saw someone with popcorn and popcorn is always good. One of us is vegan and it was so easy to accommodate that here.