The Underground at Facebook has four reviews: 5 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars, and one guy who dares ask what's up with reracking the dishes? The secret to success seems to be executive chef Josef Desimone, a steal from Google who brought several of his buddies over. Valleywag scored spy photos of the place in August. I confess I'm eyeing that plate of sushi and my résumé right now. Sheryl Sandberg can't be all that bad to work for, especially right after lunch. (Photo by donn l.)

There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon." The changes will be announced to Googlers on Monday. Workers at the Googleplex will remain amply fed, with free breakfast and lunch — dinner will be reserved for geeks only — but it's still a shocking cutback.Last year, when we aired the mildest speculation about Google cutting back on free food, commenters were outraged. Google has long milked its cafeterias for their publicity value; company executives have crowed about the company's resistance to recessions and its commitment to coddling its employees. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even promised shareholders they'd add perks, rather than cut them. In 2004, they wrote:

Health-conscious Googlers aren't sad to see new Facebook chef Josef Desimone go. "Josef Desimone was not Google's top chef," a Googler tells us. "Everyone hated his cafes. He had the worst heavy, everything-fried menus." Let's see who's slow and heavy on the ultimate field now.

Is it "poaching" when a company steals a rival's chef? At Google, executive chef Josef Desimone scrambled cruelty-free eggs by the truckload. Now Facebook has hired him to replace steam-heated trays of takeout with the kind of free food Googlers are used to. For engineers, Facebook is the new dreamland, and a company cafeteria is the kind of perk they've come to expect. But foodwise, Facebook's simply not as interesting a challenge as Google, with its thousands of employees and campuses dotted around the globe.