Café G — Restaurant in Boston

One of the best museum cafés! There are not many food options near the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum. Given the good reviews, we decided to try Café G or The Gardner Café. The café is in the entrance building off to the side. Three of the walls are floor to ceiling glass with semi transparent shades available. The café is full of basic tables with red chairs – the tables/chairs are well spaced and the feeling is light and airy. The hostess and wait staff are great and friendly! There was a large group of more than 30 that entered just before us but the café is quite large and there was plenty of seating and this did not impact our service. The paper menu is also your placemat and lists 8 entrees priced from $20-$24 with 3 desserts and then beverages including wine and beer. The sandwiches did seem overpriced for $21 but the other entrees seemed more reasonable. We opted for the shrimp piccata and pasta shells with grilled broccolini, crispy semolina polenta with cream mushrooms and ricotta and curry chicken and root vegetable stew. The shrimp pasta is an excellent choice with over 6 large shrimp and al dente pasta. The crispy polenta is a wonderful surprise in a lovely cream mushroom ricotta sauce. We were a little concerned that the chicken stew would be heavily curry flavored but the waitress assured it was mild and it is but it is a pretty basic dish. We opted for dessert and ordered the valrhona chocolate budino and oatmeal raisin cookies. The budino is chocolate heaven well balanced with blueberries and broken crunchy graham crackers – we licked the spoon and came pretty close to doing the same with the terra cotta dish. The 2 oatmeal raisin cookies were homemade and good but not sure we’d order again for $5. It was a terrific and...

TERRIBLE experience!!!!! It was me, my sister and my two daughters. We were very badly treated by the possibly manager, who told us in the most rude way that we would have to send us out because my daughter cried because she was hungry !!!! See the absurdity! If we were in the restaurant, it was exactly to satisfy her hunger, so it doesn't make any sense for the employee to say that in a loud voice at our table. She said we were disturbing people's experience there. And ours? Weren't we also customers? HOW ABSURD!!! AND WORSE…she Turned to my 2 YEAR OLD daughter and said “No more crying”!!!!! 😡😡😡😡 I had no reaction, but EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED! Then the food arrived but we left as being treated that way made no sense in continuing in that environment! I DO NOT RECOMMEND! Worst place we have ever been in our lives! Very, very sad! Every person I have the opportunity to warn, I will advise not to go to this...

Expected a simple museum cafe for coffee. Instead this was a big airy cafe glassed into the Gardner Museum gardens - green and color every way you look. And surprisingly someone really planned out a unique and tasty menu.

We hadn't intended to buy food, just coffee, but couldn't resist when we saw the strawberry (seasonal) panacotta, and the light and crispy Cape Cod clam fritters! So we had cappuccino and those snacks for late breakfast/early lunch ("elevensies"?)

The staff was charming, not pushy. They'd have been OK if we just ordered beverages, happy if we order food too, no pressure.

Also this seems to clearly, on the one hand, be a "ladies who lunch" venue - never seen so many discreet summer shifts outside the Asia Society Garden Court cafe in NYC. But they were not overwhelming in their rigor. There was plenty of attitude room for the common diner/museumer. So anyone can have a nice...