The Google culture

I have to say, Google is so cool. The people are so happy and relaxed, they enjoy their jobs, and they get so many amazing opportunities. Andrew is certainly loving everything that comes with being a Googler!

The best part though (for a wife...) is the food. There are multiple cafes at the Googleplex and they all serve fresh, tasty food - and they do their absolute best to serve fresh, local, organic produce.

There's usually only the main cafe open for dinner which is called Charlie's. Charlie's has multiple serving areas, one is Italian, one is Indian, one is Mexican, one's a bistro, and the other one is Chinese type stir fries. This is a typical evening from Namaste - the Indian place:

Konju Curry

Shrimp sautéed with onions, garlic and ginger then covered with a konju curry that contains tamarind pulp, red chilies, coriander, cumin, turmeric and grated coconut

**Moong Dahl

Lentils simmered with onions, turmeric, cumin and red chili powder

*Sabzi Paneer

Paneer cheese with green peas, carrots, red bell peppers, ginger, garlic, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric, onions, green chilies, tomatoes, cardamom, cream and fresh coriander leaves

**Cardamom Basmati

**Steamed Cauliflower

Tonight, the No Name Cafe opened its doors for dinner. No Name specialises in vegetarian, organic, freshly made to order food. You choose your own salad materials, and the chefs toss it in front of you. They also have sandwiches and things like that you can make yourself.

For dinner, they had the range of salad materials as well as Free-Range chicken breast with a citrus-thyme marinade, grass-fed rib-eye fillet steak with a cranberry chipotle glaze. They also had a pasta bar going. You chose what vegetables you would like (basil, cucumber, garlic, carrot, baby spinach leaves, roasted pumpkin and so on), then chose from tonights choice of pumpkin fettuccini, herbed spaghettini or spinach fusilli, and then a sauce - butternut squash, arrabiata or pistachio pesto, and they throw it all together in front of you, and a few minutes later serve it up steaming hot to you.

I also got them to slice up a bit of the steak and throw that on the side as well.

The steak was perfectly cooked, nice and tender and delicious, and the pasta was fantastic as well!!

We don't eat dinner at Google all that often, but when we do it's always a great experience! Might I add that this is all buffet style food, and free, so that makes it all the better! They really know how to look after their staff.

As well as that, Larry Page (ie. the guy who "invented" Google), came in to the cafe while we were there, and took his place in the line with his tray, got his dinner, and sat down at the tables with everyone else to have his dinner. It's great to see Larry and Sergey around doing things like that with everyone else. You get the impression they're very down to earth, and approachable, which is something I think is important - you don't want to think the people running the company you work at are people who you could never say hi to.