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Are there any real cafeterias left? By that I mean a kind of restaurant where you pick up a tray, go down the serving line and select what you want to eat, the server puts it on a plate, you take it and go on to select a desert (calories don't count eaten away from home) and a drink and pay for it at the end. The local Ikea store has a little one but the selection is not very large. The meatballs are very good, though, no matter what's in them. But I don't think any of the downtown lunchtime cafeterias are around anymore--not that I ever ate in one.
They exist, kinda, in two ways, at least in NYC.
The last finance firm I worked for had an employee cafeteria that was exactly what you are describing - and I loved it. The food was good (not great, but some individual items were), the service overall good as you became friends with most of the employees as you saw them almost everyday (and sometimes twice a day at breakfast and lunch) and the variety outstanding. I loved it as I'm a throwback guy, but it also was fun to have so much variety to choose from and I liked the process itself (walking around with your tray to different stations, etc.). Many of the larger NYC firms have these type of cafeterias for their employees. I'd take business friends from other firms to our if, say, a meeting ended right before lunch and, quite often, they'd want to schedule the next meeting so that they could eat lunch there again.
There are also a lot of cafeteria-like places open to the public (mainly catering to the business lunch crowd) where you grab a tray walk down a short line, pay at the end and either eat there or take out. But they aren't really like old-style cafeterias (like the ones I just described a paragraph above) as these will have a limited selection (normally oriented toward a few types of food like salads and soup or style of eating like "healthy") and at some points in the short line you'll serve yourself. Also the seating tends to be limited (not like the large seating areas of the old cafeterias or the employee ones noted above).
Back in the late '80s / '90s, I worked for Union Bank of Switzerland's NYC investment bank and the cafeteria was outrageous. Apparently, the business culture in Switzerland is different than here and providing a beautiful lunch cafeteria with outstanding food is the norm. The NYC UBS one was on the 28th floor of its tower (no basement digs for this one as most US firms do) with panoramic views of the city, marble inlayed decor that was stunning and food that was very high end (and generously subsidized by the company). Everything from a humble turkey sandwich to filet mignon (yup) was of very high quality and very thoughtfully prepared and presented. When I left for a better career opportunity - I missed the cafeteria greatly. I used to buy our family's Yule Log cake for Christmas from the dessert section of the cafeteria - still the best one we ever had.