Cornell Café & Museum Store at Morikami
The Cornell Café serves Japanese-inspired food with garden views on its own shorter schedule, and the adjoining museum store carries authentic Japanese goods — apparel, books, home décor, jewelry, tea, and exhibition merchandise.
What's here
- Cornell Café is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 AM to 3 PM — shorter hours than the museum and gardens.
- The museum store stocks apparel, books, home décor, jewelry, tea, and exhibition-specific merchandise.
- Both sit near the museum entrance, convenient for a stop on the way in or out.
Good to know
The café's hours run shorter than the gardens' — plan lunch for before 3 PM rather than at the end of a long visit.
A Pan-Asian Menu With a View
Cornell Café serves a Pan-Asian menu that draws on Japanese cooking alongside other Asian culinary traditions, giving visitors a lunch option that fits the setting rather than a generic museum cafeteria menu. Seating looks out over the surrounding gardens, so a meal here doubles as a rest stop with a view partway through a longer visit to Roji-en and the museum.
Because the café keeps its own shorter hours, Tuesday through Sunday from 11 AM to 3 PM, it's best treated as a lunch stop built into the middle of a visit rather than an anytime option — arriving hungry at the end of the afternoon runs the risk of finding it already closed for the day.
Recognized Beyond Morikami
Cornell Café's food has drawn attention beyond Morikami's own visitors, earning recognition on national food media for a museum café menu that goes well past what many similar venues offer. That reputation has made the café a destination in its own right for some visitors, not just a convenient stop between the gardens and the parking lot.
The menu draws enough of a following that it's worth planning around its limited hours rather than treating it as a backup option, particularly for visitors specifically curious about its more elevated take on museum dining.
The Museum Store
The adjoining museum store carries a wide range of authentic Japanese goods, including apparel, books, home décor, jewelry, and tea, giving visitors a place to take home something more specific to Japanese culture than a typical gift-shop souvenir. Merchandise tied to current exhibitions rotates alongside the store's standing inventory, so the selection shifts somewhat as the museum's galleries change.
Positioned near the museum entrance alongside the café, the store is an easy stop on the way in or out, whether the goal is a last-minute gift, a book to read up on Japanese art and gardens, or tea to bring home from the visit.
See the rest of the park
Café & Store is one of 6 featured areas at Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens.