 The hotel featured fine dining in the Flag Room, a casual first-floor coffee shop, and the underground Rice Hotel Cafeteria, known for its signature dish, rice pudding.It had a variety of retail shops, including a lobby news stand, a hat store, and Bilton's Fine Jewelry.In 1962 the Rice Hotel was used for a meeting of NASA Astronaut Group 2 - The New Nine - all of whom booked in with the code name "Max Peck" as portrayed on the 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon".