There’s a quiet magic happening these days at the Golden Dome Café, where longtime chef Dolores Johnson brings her passion for whole-food vegetarian cooking to the newly renovated space. Located at 1112 Granville Ave. on the Maharishi International University campus in Fairfield, the expanded restaurant has become one of the best-kept secrets—and best values—in town. Lunch and dinner buffets offer nourishing organic meals, and pre-ordered to-go meals and convenient “take home favorites” can be picked up.
More Than a Cafe
Everything in the lunch and dinner buffet line is made in-house from ingredients that are certified organic and never genetically modified. The buffet menu varies with new favorites every day: lasagna layered with ricotta and roasted vegetables. Polenta finished with herbs from local growers. Enchiladas, spinach pie, walnut burgers, and a rotating cast of seasonal vegetable dishes—the kind of food that tastes like someone who genuinely loves cooking made it, because someone who genuinely loves cooking did make it.
And then there’s the price. In our current food landscape, where a fast-food meal can easily run $14 or $15, the Golden Dome Café offers a full organic meal made from scratch for a comparable price—and every ingredient is clean, each dish is made fresh that day, and nothing comes wrapped in plastic from a warehouse.
A Lifelong Passion
Ask Dolores Johnson how she became one of the most respected cooks in the Maharishi International University community, and she’ll tell you that she never set out to be a chef at all.
“I didn’t know how to cook,” she says of the time in her early twenties when she was asked to run meal service for a meditation course in Marin County, California. Faced with the task of preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a large group—with no formal cooking training—she went to the library, checked out a book called Cooking for 50, and simply figured it out.
That resourcefulness became a decade-long apprenticeship in itself. Dolores ran those course kitchens for more than ten years, then spent five years training under chefs at a French cooking school near her California home, absorbing technique the old-fashioned way—by doing, tasting, adjusting, and doing it again.
From there, her path wound through private chef work, catering, and eventually to Maharishi International University, where she has been feeding the students, faculty, staff, and visiting guests for well over three decades, since 1988.
For Dolores, cooking has never really been a job in the conventional sense—it’s a calling, one she describes as being written into her very nature. “It has to be your passion,” she says of the work. “It’s not a business. It’s a dharma.”
Now that Dolores is running the Golden Dome Café together with head chef Lety Alonso and night cook Nayna Dave, that fervor for good food animates everything they do at the eatery.
A Host of Conveniences
For the working professional trying to eat well on limited time, the cafe’s pre-ordered lunches remain a popular offering. The two-story cafe has also expanded its physical footprint, now offering additional seating on the main level.
Perhaps the most exciting recent addition is the pre-ordered “take-home favorites” program. Whole trays of lasagna and spinach pie, and whole organic apple and fruit pies are available to order ahead and take home, ready to warm and serve.
The cafe has also added a large event space offering catering and reservation options for birthdays, celebrations, and other special occasions.
Perhaps the most exciting recent addition is the pre-ordered “take-home favorites” program. Whole trays of lasagna and spinach pie, and whole organic apple and fruit pies are available to order ahead and take home, ready to warm and serve.
The cafe has also added a large event space offering catering and reservation options for birthdays, celebrations, and other special occasions.
Seasonal Specials
Beyond its daily menu, the Golden Dome Café has begun building an end-of-the-month Gourmet Special designed to turn a meal into an occasion.
This September brings the Harvest Feast, a celebration of the season’s best organic produce. October follows with a Halloween Special, offering a seasonal, festive menu that turns an ordinary weeknight dinner into something memorable. And then there are Dolores and Lety’s not-to-be-missed Thanksgiving and holiday special meals.
The Golden Dome Café offers something increasingly rare in our modern world: real, organic, made-with-love food, cooked by someone who has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of feeding people well—and priced so that eating well doesn’t have to be a luxury.
To place an order, call (641) 472-1220. Find more at GoldenDomeCafe.org.