Currier Museum of Art Cafe

LOCATION: 150 Ash Street Manchester, NH 03104
TYPE OF FOOD: American/Italian (casual)
REVIEW: Museum cafes can be many different things, depending on the museum. For instance, science museums tend to be basic, simple food (usually pizza, burgers and salad because they tend to be more popular), and usually taste pretty good. History museums tend to lean toward sandwiches and salads, and can range in taste. And any other museum (news, biography, etc.) doesn't have a cafe, and if it does, is either terrible or really, really good. Art museums? Well, you'll see.

The menu at the cafe was left absolutely no choice in terms of healthiness. In fact, it left only one choice-a vegetable "panini" (whenever there are quotation marks, and the word panini is in between..... darn). So no fights. No tugging. No psychological warfare. No pranks. Just some vegetables thrown into a multi-grain bun thrown into a grill. And I thought this as I sat down, and waited five to ten minutes to receive my panini with pasta salad and a dill pickle.

My least favorite vegetable is zucchini. I hate it more than I hate Dana Carvey in "Master of Disguise" (ugh, don't remind me....). And guess what? It was in the panini. So I hated the panini. There was no flavor, no zing, absolutely nothing. The pasta salad also had zucchini, which (you guessed it) ruined it for me more than my curiosity ruining every single show I like (I look it up on Wikipedia, ruins whole episodes!). So I got up and left. No getting out of my seat, putting my tray away, that lame stuff. I left. Period.

SERVICE: As you would expect from every one of my eleven previous reviews, the service was behaved and open (is that better than nice and friendly? I abused that phrase way too much!). You didn't interact with them, as they stayed behind the counter for 95% of the time. However, they do bring your food to you, and are attentive. However, on a different order, one person ordered pasta salad and got cole slaw, and another person ordered cole slaw and got pasta salad. Muy, muy epic fail (Spanish works the other way around sometimes).

ATMOSPHERE: The place was a large, tall room which originally was an entrance. I mean, this place was huge. Larger than every sumo wrestler in all of Asia (I don't want to try, though). I saw that one table had two large crumbs on it, where I believe someone ate a scone. Otherwise the floor and tables were clean, but nothing stood out in the entire place. There were two paintings near the entrance which had different people dressed in clothes reflecting different cultures. But otherwise the atmosphere struck out. Zero for three.

PRICE: Thirty dollars for three people. Wow. So that's eight dollars for a horrible panini, awful pasta salad, and a room that should be used for anything but a cafe. Well, I mean it's three items, so I suppose that's a deal. Fine. I'll give that to them. When Oliver Stone is proven right (three shots, one book depository, one gun, end of story).

RATING: When I handed in my tray, a staff member noticed how many vegetables were on my plate. I usually eat every single vegetable on my plate. But the horrible pesto and terrible zucchini on the grilled sandwich (it's not a panini!) ruined it. And I had a horrible time, biting and chewing every bite I could, making sure my taste buds missed the horror. So yeah. I had a bad time. The Currier Museum of Art Cafe gets a one out of five.