is museum food that bad? i ate at a renowned museum cafe to find out
museum food get a bad rep, so i put one to a taste test
If you truly know me, you would know that I love museums. They are some of my favorite places to tour when I’m visiting a new city. I’m also fortunate to live in a city with easy and (free!) access to several museums.
Museums are important cultural institutions and serve as important pillars of societal preservation and documentation. When you think of museums, dinosaur bones, porcelain vases, marble sculptures, and Renaissance paintings may come to mind. The word “food” probably never popped up in your brain. I’m willing to bet the words “let’s grab dinner at the nearby museum” were never uttered in the entire existence of humankind.
Museum food gets a bad rep for a reason though. It’s usually prepackaged slop you can find at gas stations. It’s an afterthought for many institutions. But it shouldn’t be. Like gift shops, the food should be a reflection and continuation of the museum’s curation and purpose. The food should also be part of the experience. Why sell deli sandwiches and burgers when you can highlight fare relevant to the city and culture?
Planet Word, an immersive museum focused on languages, is successful in incorporating food into its overall experience. Immigrant Food is housed in the museum's lower floor and features various global cuisines, often reflecting the city’s immigrant communities. Find Vietnamese banh mís, Ivory Coast-inspired gumbo, and Venezuelan tequeños on its menu.
And just outside of DC, Glenstone’s cafe menu items rotate seasonally and are made with locally sourced ingredients. In the summer, you can nosh on staples like ricotta radish toast, pan-seared lamb, and strawberry sorbet.
DC is a budding food city. You can find nearly every global cuisine in every corner of DC. But if you find yourself hanging out at the National Mall all day, the Smithsonian’s museums generally have great noshing options. The Hirshhorn is home to Dolcezza, a local coffee shop. The Museum of the American Indian is known for delicious Indigenous cuisine, pozole, green chile corn muffins, maple brined turkey, and trout at its Mitsitam Cafe. And the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is home to the renowned Sweet Home Cafe. Nominated in 2017 for the James Beard Award, the cafe “showcases the rich culture and history of the African American people with traditional, authentic offerings,” according to the Smithsonian.
To understand the hype and recognition, I paid the Sweet Home Cafe a visit in late May. This was my third or fourth time at the museum, but my first time grabbing lunch there. As I entered the cafeteria, it was packed with visitors and food. I let my nose guide me through the area. Right in front of me were the soul food staples: buttermilk fried chicken, BBQ pulled pork, collard greens, roasted sweet potato, mac ‘n cheese, and cornbread.
Sweet Home Cafe is split by four stations representing the different regions of the United States and where you can find varying Black American cuisines: The North States, Agricultural South, Creole Coast, and Western Range (the cafe was, interestingly enough, at the time also serving Asian-inspired fare for the week, such as Cambodian-style noodles, in celebration of AAPI Heritage Month).
For a plate of fried chicken (it looks like they give out three pieces) and a side, it costs $18.95. For a plate with three sides, it’s $21.95. Since I don’t eat meat, I settled for the three side sampler for under $15. I skipped the greens four today and got mac ‘n cheese, sweet potato, and cornbread. Maybe living in DC has made my wallet immune to high prices, but I wasn’t shell-shocked at the prices. The cost of the main dishes and sides were comparative to restaurants in the area.
Now it’s time for the taste test! Is Home Sweet Cafe, a concept that landed itself in the 2017 James Beard Awards semifinals, worth the hype and price tag? It should be noted that I am no food critic and I’m not a picky eater at all (if you ignore that I’m vegetarian). It takes a lot for me to dislike a dish.
I dove into the mac ‘n cheese first. Its crispy, charred cheese crust had me almost salivating. As I scooped and bit into it, I instantly knew that the crust was going to be the best part of the dish. Digging into the next layer unveils a gooey oasis. The macaroni was pillowy and soft with the melted cheese hanging onto them. 4/5.
Next up was the sweet potato. While it was not anything spectacular (baked potatoes isn’t necessarily my favorite form of potato), it was still delicious. The potato was rich and buttery. The sweetness from the sweet potato carried through on its own. 3/5.
If there was a perfect order to eat soul food, cornbread is obviously saved for last. I haven’t experienced a cornbread that wow me and it looks like the journey to finding one continues. The cafe’s cornbread wasn’t at all horrible. At its worst, it was an inoffensive, kinda too dry cornbread. It was a little dry for me, but it sings that sweetness and corn flavor that I grew accustomed to in cornbread. 4/5. Overall, the entire plate garnered a score of 11/15.
My visit to Home Sweet Cafe was an enjoyable experience. While my side sampler was simple and nothing extraordinary, I practically licked the plate clean. DC is sparsely home to soul food restaurants (at least to my limited knowledge), so if you’re an out-of-towner visiting the National Mall and craving a heaping plate of fried chicken and collard green, Home Sweet Cafe is a safe option for soul food to remind you of home sweet home.