Mixt Greens, Aspiring for Multiple Locations Downtown

[Adam23]

Mixt Greens, a San Francisco-based salad chain opened today on 19th St above M in the old High Noon space. I've been watching this space for some time wondering if anything would ever open there - but it did, today, finally. Speaking with a manager, it sounds like Mixt Greens has a rather aggressive expansion plan in DC, something like 5 locations by the end of the year.

When I entered the store and was handed a menu I said wow. Burrata, american kobe beef, and seared ahi tuna - every play out of the restaurateur playbook. Throw in the signage that "your eco-gourmet® meal supports: LOCAL FARMS, ORGANIC PRODUCE, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, GREEN BUILDING, RENEWABLE ENERGY, AND HEALTHY EATING", I knew I was about to enter a restaurant contrived by pure marketing genius. I was like a pimple-faced 18 year old visiting Scores for the first time. If only they would haven taken it to the next level and gave me humanely raised chicken and the lettuce from a rooftop garden, I would have exploded.

Sarcasm aside, this place oozes eco-chic. Take Sweetgreen's earth-friendly image, kick it up a few notches, and charge a hefty premium for the pleasure of dining at Mixt. (It worked, they offered me a salad for a 10% premium over Chopt and Sweetgreen). The facility itself is nice - a clean, modern look. And the staff is friendly and articulate.

So what about the food? The salads themselves are decent. Whenever I visit a salad place for the first time, I order a cobb salad. In my mind, it is fairly simple to make a good one and much easier to make a bad one. Does it have crispy bacon? Is the avocado fresh or hard? Is the lettuce crisp? Based on my experience today, Mixt makes a decent cobb salad- better than Chopt but not nearly as good as Sweetgreen. On the cobb salad Mixt uses butter lettuce, an option not available at its competitors. However the problem is that they just pull the head of lettuce apart into large pieces, making it difficult to eat without a knife. The mix-ins are good. The tomatoes were room temperature and flavorful, the cucumbers were seeded, the bleu cheese was tasty and the bacon was very crisp and cut into large pieces - almost like lardons. The avocado was 80% ripe, not perfect but definitely not the granite i've been served at other restaurants on occasion. The chicken was served slightly chilled and was tender, but instead of having cut-up chicken pieces like its competitors, Mixt uses slices that they place on top of the salad, once again requiring the use of a knife. Overall, the ingredients were good, but the dressing on my salad, a vinaigrette, was terrible and bland, rendering a pretty good salad merely adequate.

One thing I did enjoy was the bread served with the salad. It was a slice of tasty and fresh wheat bread. Very good.

Cobb salad aside, my co-workers were impressed with the variety of toppings. Jicama, macadamia nuts, soba noodles, papaya, etc. They have an endless assortment of options that other places don't have. And my co-workers commented that the toppings tasted fresh, but did get weighted down by seriously bland dressings that resulted in bland salads. Everyone was open to trying it again, but no one was running back.

One nice addition is that Mixt offers sandwiches that look very good. They have a turkey sandwich, meatloaf sandwich, buratta sandwich, etc. They all looked delicious and were being made on freshly sliced foccacia bread (which I saw them slice from huge loafs - and that bread looked really good). I'll have to try them and report back.

Overall, a welcome addition but salad-wise not in the same league as some of its competitors, particularly considering it was about a buck more.

And yes, I plan to compost my eco-gourmet® corn-biopolymer biodegradable container.

[squidsdc]

I checked out the website to find the hours (10:30-3:00) and noticed a really cool nutritional calculator. You can build your own salad and calculate the nutritional breakdown. There is also an extensive listing including prepared salads grouped by if you are concerned about calories, fat, protein, carbs, sodium, and cholesterol. There is also a note that the 13th and F St location is due to open Feb 9th.

[porcupine]

Burrata... LOCAL FARMS, ORGANIC PRODUCE, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, GREEN BUILDING, RENEWABLE ENERGY, AND HEALTHY EATING"

Huh. I didn't know there were any nearby dairy operations producing burrata.

[Sthitch]

Huh. I didn't know there were any nearby dairy operations producing burrata.

Well there aren’t any avocado orchards or tuna boats nearby either. I think that they are trying to say that where possible they use local farms, or they are just blowing green smoke.

[Anna Blume]

Huh. I didn't know there were any nearby dairy operations producing burrata.

Well, not pineapples, jicama, macademia nuts, etc. Probably not enough salad greens to keep this place stocked at this time of year, either.

Cf. previous discussions of Fishers & Farmers, etc. Note the copies of trade magazines on the counter at Safeway that feature the latest trends in marketing, including touting "local" vs. "organic". The folk behind this company seem in earnest, it's just that San Francisco provides a lot more than the Mid-Atlantic.

What will be more interesting is the impact of this West-Coast import on the younger, local business, Sweetgreens (which buys from a number of local farms and also plans to expand beyond its home base). Are salads in eco-friendly settings the new cupcakes?

[DPop]

Are salads in eco-friendly settings the new cupcakes?

That would be nice if only because it would be a trendy food item that is on the healthier side as opposed to cupcakes, fancy burgers, pizza, beer bars, etc. I have yet to see any place execute it well, though, so hopefully there will be a surge in these types of places and we can get one that does it well (at a reasonable price).

[deangold]

(at a reasonable price).

[Dean climbing up on his soapbox]Please note that this is writen without the benefit of actually eating at the place.

There's the rub.... you can but 3 pounds of Earthbound Farms organic greens, industrially grown and as damaging to their eco system as convventional if not more so {source Michael Pollan Omnivore's Dilema} . Personal aside, Earthboud farms tastes like crap too!

Conversely, local organic greens right now are about $20 for 1.5#. So how can someone who is using locally grown greens possibly have a "reasonable price" for a salad? What is a reasonable price {ie my salad costs $X but is truly sustainable vs Earthbound which has a production model that is destroying the fertiity of the Salina Valley and is so large that when there is a food borne illness outbreak associated with them occurs, millions are exposed and 10's of thousands are affected}. I mean what is the price you really are paying for industrially produced crap?

And don't thing I am saying large is bad. Just read up on Krieder Farms who seems to have a model that produces price competitive {real only slightly higher priced than strictly conventional who ar amongst the heaviest polluters of the Chessapeake} milk and eggs that are extremely low impact on the environment compared to the standard model. Not as low as an egg from the Dupont Market, but far cheaper and available to a wider range of folk.

Seasonal? Tomatoes at this time of year. I know of restaurants where you cannot buy a fresh tomato at this time of year but this supposedly green place is serving tomatoes! Do we have a farking constitutional right to tomatoes at a time where they either have come out of a hot house {not exactly the best use of farming resources due to the electricity etc necessary to produce these poorly flavored and textured red pieces of crap} or they are industrially produced? Well yeah, we do ahve a constitutional right to freedom of choice even if the choices might be killing us. But.... Sorry, this tain't sustainable.

Until people are willing to pay for what sustainable food really costs up font, we will continue to pay backdoor for the pleasures of a cheaper menu and poor health.[/soapbox]

[Ericandblueboy]

Curiousity made me peek into this thread. Cliff Note: don't eat at Mixt or Dean will filet you alive.

[porcupine]

Well there aren’t any avocado orchards or tuna boats nearby either. I think that they are trying to say that where possible they use local farms, or they are just blowing green smoke.

The latter is what I was getting at. "Green" is the new "organic" is the new "gourmet" etc.

[Adam23]

Seasonal? Tomatoes at this time of year. I know of restaurants where you cannot buy a fresh tomato at this time of year but this supposedly green place is serving tomatoes!

"Of course, customers don't have a say over what's in season, so certain ingredients cycle in and out, but expect salad staples year-round. "Cherry tomatoes, people can't live without them," David Silverglide adds." (http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/01/mixt-greens-resturant.php)

[Oh ok.]

"The point for the Mixt Greens team is not “screaming in (the customer’s) face” about eco-consiousness, but simply walking the talk and allowing customers to make choices that not only taste good, but support the overall commitment to sustainability." (http://www.triplepundit.com/2008/12/mixt-greens-san-francisco-eco-gourmet-restaurant-is-a-marriage-of-gourmet-and-green/)

[Confused.]

[deangold]

"Of course, customers don't have a say over what's in season, so certain ingredients cycle in and out, but expect salad staples year-round. "Cherry tomatoes, people can't live without them," David Silverglide adds." (http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/01/mixt-greens-resturant.php)

Ya know, we had three people keel over and die last night because they couldn't get their Insalata Caprese....

Curiousity made me peek into this thread. Cliff Note: don't eat at Mixt or Dean will filet you alive.

Hey, you have to decide what you do with your money and with your body and with your environment. At a great cost to my bottom line, I am happy with the choices I have made personally. But if Mix't thinks they are walking the talk......

[DonRocks]

Hey, you have to decide what you do with your money and with your body and with your environment. At a great cost to my bottom line, I am happy with the choices I have made personally.

[DameEdna]

M Street ... strip clubs and lettuce. You are what you eat?

[porcupine]

Until people are willing to pay for what sustainable food really costs up font, we will continue to pay backdoor for the pleasures of a cheaper menu and poor health.[/soapbox]

Dean, you would probably enjoy Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood.

[porcupine]

Note the copies of trade magazines on the counter at Safeway that feature the latest trends in marketing, including touting "local" vs. "organic".

<.>

[DaRiv18]

The Mixt Greens on 17th and K does not use a poster, but rather displays its lunch options on three 50"ish flatscreen monitors . . . struck me as a big waste of electrictity that contradicts its mission statement

On the cobb salad Mixt uses butter lettuce, an option not available at its competitors. However the problem is that they just pull the head of lettuce apart into large pieces, making it difficult to eat without a knife. . . . Overall, the ingredients were good, but the dressing on my salad, a vinaigrette, was terrible and bland, rendering a pretty good salad merely adequate.

Agree with this. I ordered the Maui with ahi tuna and the butter lettuce . . . the problem isn't just that they just pull the butter lettuce head apart in large pieces, but also that they did not bother to wash the lettuce afterwards (that batch, at least). Very gritty lettuce that I ended up spitting out. The dressing was also very bland, I was very disappointed.

I have ordered the basic Dagwood (mixt greens, roasted red peppers, roasted zucchini, roasted portabella mushrooms, caramelized onions, goat cheese, garlic croutons, lemon herb vinaigrette) several times, and have enjoyed that. But generally I'll hit Pret a Manager before this.

[Bob Wells]

It looks like a Mixt Greens will be opening at McPherson Sq (Vermont and K) at some point. They don't seem to be in much of a rush. That's close enough to my office that I might try an overpriced salad there.

[wlohmann]

Always applauded the aspirations but found MixT Greens overpriced and just never felt drawn to the 13th and F location downtown. Just walked by it and, after perusing the cheery "we are closed to give our staff a holiday break" sign on the window, looked in to see the interior completely gutted...........does NOT look like they will reopen with the New Year..................

[DonRocks]

Always applauded the aspirations but found MixT Greens overpriced and just never felt drawn to the 13th and F location downtown. Just walked by it and, after perusing the cheery "we are closed to give our staff a holiday break" sign on the window, looked in to see the interior completely gutted...........does NOT look like they will reopen with the New Year..................

According to their website, they also have locations at 19th and M and 17th and K (the website gives no indication that 13th and F is closed, however, so who knows?)

Thanks for the intel,

Rocks