All you can eat and (kind of) healthy, too
Written: Oct 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: you can (over)eat your fill of good, healthy food
Cons: at times overrun with rugrats
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| scmrak's Full Review: Fresh Choice |
When we still lived in Denver, we used to eat at the local version of Fresh Choice (a restaurant called called "Healthy Habits") on a very regular basis -- at least three times a month. After a few years in a part of the country where a "salad" is the slice of onion next to the barbecue sauce, it was nice to move back to a town where there was at least something that resembled my old favorite.
Austin has only the one Fresh Choice (like everything else in town, it's within a mile of the intersection of Loop 1 and US 183); there are a couple in Dallas and Fort Worth, and a sister chain (Zuppa's) has a shop or two in San Antonio. Guess that I'm still in the "onion slice" zone... Since Austin's is such an inconvenient location for us, I only get there two or three times a year.
Now some teenager (who thinks Jack-in-the-Box is fine cuisine) didn't like FC because there wasn't enough meat. Geez, it IS a salad bar, after all. They put out a pretty broad array of foods, though, including vegetarian, low-fat, and more conventional dishes. And, since it's a buffet-style shop, you can eat your fill of whatever is your choice.
If I were going to rate my old Healthy Habits restaurant, I'd give it a five-star rating hands down. But Fresh Choice has always lagged a bit behind HH. They don't offer as many low-fat (and especially low-sodium) dishes, and their bread/muffin and dessert selections are pretty skimpy. I've never had any complaint with the freshness of the food, though, and when you're your own serving wench (or whatever) you can't complain about the size of the portions or the value for the money. But I feel like the addition of that pasta bar and the pizza slices has overextended their kitchens.
When I was last in Denver, we hit our old neighborhood Healthy Habits (West Colfax, for you cogniscenti) for dinner one evening. It's still better than Fresh Choice, even though they're almost carbon copies. Maybe the food just tastes better at high altitude, but it seemed to me that the sauces were, well, saucier, and the soups more tasty and the fruits and veggies a little fresher. Too bad Thomas Wolfe was right -- you can't go home again...
Food:
There's an abundance of salad stuff (all the rabbit food you can eat), plus prepared tuna, pasta, and potato salads. There's also a soup kettle with three different soups (almost always a low-fat version), a pasta bar with several different sauces, and a pizza bar with three or four different pies sliced up and stuck under a heat lamp. They also lay out a spread of different breads -- corn bread, muffins, and regular sliced stuff. For dessert, you can usually get fruit, frozen yogurt, and a cookie or brownie.
To drink, there are the usual suspects -- bottomless coffee, fountain sodas, lemonade and tea; plus milk, beer and wine selections.
Service:
I've never had any problems with service. I will warn you, however, that if you have a choice of lines, don't get stuck behind my wife!
Decor:
All hard surfaces, which tends to make it very noisy. Since children under a certain age (five, I think) eat free, there are millions of strollers and high chairs. I've been unable to get through the restaurant aisles more than once because of all the kid paraphernalia.
Recommended:
Yes
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