Cafe’s patio. Iconic site lacks only one thing: people

“How to find the Salk Cafe?” replies this kindly professor type to my query. “And you’re walking? Ha! Head west on Gilman Drive. Turn right onto Mandeville Lane. Turn right onto Muir Lane. Turn left onto Muir College Drive…” And that ain’t the half of it. He’s really trying to be helpful, but it’s hopeless. I swear, UCSD students must spend half their learning hours wandering around, looking for classrooms. At best, the Salk Cafe is supposed to be a 30-minute walk from the Blue Line trolley’s Central Campus Station. But give yourself an hour. You’ve really got to want to go to this place.

I do want to, if only because the cafe’s in that incredible Salk Institute building, the one that kinda leaps towards the ocean. It has won just about every architectural prize out there, and its scientists are totally cutting edge — starting with Jonas Salk, who single-handedly saved the world from polio. They say the only people here who don’t have Nobel Prize medals clanging around their necks are the cleaning crew. And maybe some of them, too.

Server Andy fills my box of beef and broccoli, rice and veggies. At $8, a deal!

I finally make it through to the actual building, just before hitting the ocean. Wow. Awesome. Plonked in the midst of a countryside that’s unchanged, they say, since Cabrillo sailed this ocean blue in 1542. But that’s the thing: where is everybody? Not a sign of life! Yes, I see guys floating past in mid-air, slung under hang gliders, looking like they’re lying in sleeping bags. But sounds? A couple of seagulls squawk at each other. I hear the chuckle of a distant fountain. That’s about it. No humans. No voices. I look at this incredible, but incredibly empty building-scape, and I think post-apocalypse: Did some sort of smart bomb destroy everything except the buildings?

Then I notice one fellow humanoid, this guy at an outside table, studying. “Hate to interrupt, but have you heard of the Salk Cafe?” I ask him. He’s a neuro-science intern. “Right here,” he says. “Through that door.” Whu? Oh. He’s nodding towards a slammer with a single sign: “No Lab Coats in the Cafeteria.” That’s it. No hint of what’s inside, no “Cafe,” no “Nutritious cellular structures inside,” not even a blunt “Eats.” But I ain’t going nowhere until I’ve found some. It has taken me so long to get here, I’m starving. Then, oh no. As I come in I see they’re starting to pack up. “We close at 2:30, and we really stop serving at two,” says the gal, Andy. But she’ll serve me what she has.

The menu’s pretty big for something this hole-in-the-wall. Food’s kind of what you expect in a college cafeteria. Actually, it’s two menus. Breakfast goes from 7 am to 10 am. Than a gap. Then lunch from 11 am to 2 pm. Natch, it leans heavily into healthy, but the first thing I notice are the prices. Not rock bottom, but definitely reasonable.

For breakfast, they do sandwiches, burritos, omelets, specials. They don’t get down to the nitty-gritty details on this menu. But you get an indication from their “breakfast grill” choices, like the basic two eggs, two bacon, fresh fruit and yogurt, for $5.20. They go romantic with the “Moons Over Miami” sandwich, which comes with house potatoes for $5.20. Or the “Grand Slam” breakfast, whatever that is (they don’t say), also $5.20. Vague on details, but good prices!

Still, I’ll be lucky to even get lunch before they haul in the chafing dishes. And uh-oh, they have already taken most of them. “We only have the beef and broccoli with rice and veggies left,” Andy says. Dang. Had visions of the other specials they have advertised: achiote chicken (colored and flavored with the slight bitterness of the achiote seed) with Mexican rice and pinto beans, $9.60, or roasted pork loin with sweet potato mash and roasted vegetables, also $9.60. The vegetarian choices don’t look at all bad, either. Vegetarian fajitas with Mexican rice and pinto beans, $8. Also $8: stuffed portobello mushrooms with sweet potato mash and roasted veggies.

Salk scientists have learned to eat their broccoli right here at the Salk Cafe

I mean, yes, old-school cafeteria fodder. But all these Newtons and Einsteins didn’t come here to Salk to further their gastronomic careers. They just need the numbers: protein, fats, rda’s, whatever. Also, I’m grateful there are no signs of wacky hi-tech food items. No cutting-edge powdered drinks, no gloops from some exotic swamp where people live to be 203.

But now I am getting “We’ll take anything!” messages from down below. “Like, now!” My stomach’s ready to rrrumboll! So — do I have a choice? — I go for the beef and broccoli. Anything to fuel the return hike up through the briar patch of UCSD’s campus to the trolley’s Central Campus Station. To drink, I buy a can of Red Bull, partly because I remember when I was a kid reporter and it was the local energy drink in Bangkok, Thailand — long before it went on to caffeinate the en-tire world. Costs me $2.95. I notice it has pride of place in their drink racks. Of course. Customers in a place like this have to keep their brains tweaked to “super-awake!” all day.

Andy charges me only $8 for the beef ’n broccoli, maybe because she’s scooping out the last of the chafing dish. I end up eating outside, looking right through the bushes out to that huge ocean. I sit just a column away from my sole companion, the neuro-science intern. Usually, I’ll chat up anyone situated that close by, but I hate to interrupt. He looks like he’s studying for some exam.

The only sign there’s a cafeteria here. Public are welcome, but finding it? On their own

The beef and broccoli definitely have the umami you’d expect. But next time (and hopefully there will be a next time: I wanna try that surreal para-sailing just once), I want to come earlier, when the selection is at full strength and the place is full of eggheads busting their boiled eggs and asking each other, “Could you pass the Salk and pepper please?”

• The Place: Salk Cafe, Salk Institute Road, La Jolla, 858-453-4100
• Hours: 7am - 2.30pm; closed Saturdays and Sundays
• Prices: Breakfast Grill (2 eggs, 2 bacon, fruit and yogurt), $5.20; Moons Over Miami sandwich with house potatoes, $5.20; açaí bowl, $5.20; Grand Slam Breakfast, $5.20; beef and broccoli, with steamed rice and veggies, $10.25; achiote chicken, Mexican rice, pinto beans, $9.60; stuffed portobello with sweet potato mash, roast veggies, $8; roasted pork loin, $9.60; spinach berry salad, $8.25; mushroom Swiss burger with fried mozzarella,$7.35; Italian turkey club sandwich, with sweet potato fries, $7.35
• Buses: 101, campus buses
• Nearest Bus Stops: North Torrey Pines Road, and Salk Institute Road (101, “Oceanside”, northbound, or “VA/UCSD,” southbound); campus bus stop nearest Salk Cafe: North Torrey Pines Road and Muir College Drive; (watch for “OL” -“Outside Loop” for campus buses to and from SD Trolley’s Central Campus Station)