In the middle of the Pentagon is a large, pleasant, five-sided courtyard. In the middle of the courtyard is a small building.

As you might expect, the Soviet Union used to have a satellite that kept a watchful, unblinking eye on the Pentagon, the courtyard and especially that building in the middle of the courtyard.

The Soviets called it “Ground Zero” because of all the people that would come and go. Any place with that much foot traffic in the middle of the Pentagon had to be of tremendous strategic significance, they reasoned.

It was a hot dog stand. Hungry Pentagon employees would go to it all the time.

I recently had the privilege to tour the Pentagon, which some of its inhabitants refer to as the Five-Sided Wonder Palace. It’s massive, of course — it used to be the largest office building in the world, though it has been surpassed by a diamond trade center in India — and is a twisting, winding maze of five concentric pentagonal buildings, each one five stories high.

The joint chiefs of staff have their offices there. So does the secretary of defense. The office the secretary of defense uses to apply his makeup before press conferences is there, too.

Some of the hallways are like a museum, with exhibits devoted to American involvement in various wars, or historic guns, or uniforms of the past.

But what interested me most was the food.

With more than 23,000 military and civilian employees working there every day, the Pentagon is often compared to a small city — it’s about the size of Webster Groves. In its 17.5 miles worth of hallways, you can find pretty much anything you need to live reasonably comfortably.

There’s a dry cleaners, a shoe shine place, a jeweler and a chapel where the building was hit by a plane on Sept. 11, 2001. You can buy toiletries at convenience stores, and also the kind of snacks that are usually found in convenience stores.

For even more convenience, vending machines are scattered throughout the building’s 6.5 million square feet. Both Coke and Pepsi products are available, and when have you ever seen that in a single building? The soft drinks are just $1.50.

For a little treat, there is a Nothing Bundt Cakes stand, though apparently it keeps moving around the building. A Nothing Bundt Cakes food truck is parked in the courtyard.

For employees or guests who want to bring home an anniversary gift, or perhaps to give a little something to a date, there is a chocolate shop there, too. Velatis — “Famous caramels since 1866” — has a shop where you can buy your fill of caramels, chocolates and toffee.

It isn’t cheap, though. The fancier caramels cost $32 a pound.

For meals, many employees head to the Market Basket, the Pentagon location of a local Northern Virginia chain that is sort of a combination cafeteria and food court. It offers an extraordinary selection of a hot buffet (one recent day included Peruvian chicken, homestyle meatloaf and pork loin in mushroom gravy), cold buffet (Italian seafood salad, spicy Asian chicken and asparagus salad, and many more), Asian specialties (kung po chicken, stir-fried pork with asparagus, and several others), a hot deli grill (steak and cheese, Southwest grilled turkey), a cold deli, soups of the day, desserts and, of course, pizza.

One of the Market Basket locations is open 24 hours a day. A lot of people work the overnight shift at the Pentagon, for reasons that should be obvious.

Celebrity chef Robert Irvine also has a restaurant there, Fresh Kitchen, which is open for breakfast and lunch. It is the only sit-down restaurant in the building, with everything from a build-your-own omelet option for breakfast to burgers, pizza and even such options as mango-glazed salmon for lunch.

Two Fresh Kitchen carts elsewhere in the building have grab-and-go offerings such as tuna salad for people who are busy.

And let’s face it, everyone there is busy.

As with every American city, an abundance of fast-food restaurants are scattered throughout the building and especially in the centrally located Concourse Food Court. These include all of the essentials (McDonalds, Taco Bell, Jamba Juice, Popeye’s, Panera) as well as some lesser known outlets (Smoke Datt Barbecue, Lebanese Taberna, Hissho Sushi).

Of course, you can’t expect the joint chiefs of staff or the secretary of defense to eat with the hoi polloi. For them and other high-ranking officials, and their guests, there are the Executive Messes.

I saw the daily menu for one Executive Mess, and I wasn’t exactly impressed. The highest ranking military officials in the country could dine on Caesar wraps or Buffalo chicken wraps, salmon bites bowls or the amusingly named Warrior Bowl, which turned out to be a protein choice with cilantro-lime rice, street corn and chipotle cream.

Basically, it’s Chipotle.

And that old hot dog stand in the middle of the five-sided, five-acre courtyard? It’s now a Potbelly sandwich restaurant.

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