Smiley said roughly one-third of his stores in development will feature a drive-thru, and that 70% of the chain’s orders are digital. The chain recently announced an expansion of 10 additional locations in Minnesota and will announce its first Florida location within days, according to a company spokesperson. Smiley has lofty goals for Crisp & Green, which was founded in 2016 and currently has 195 stores built or in development in 19 states. We make it and prepare it back of house, just like a full-service restaurant.” ‘Healthy’ means that food actually comes from a farm, it comes raw,” he said, in a recent interview with The Food Institute.
He feels competitors “have left this amazing runway open for new concepts to come in and build. Yet, founder Steele Smiley promises an unrivaled focus on freshness and healthiness. Regardless, it’s nice to see another stab at quick and healthy in the food market.WAYZATA, Minnesota – Crisp & Green isn’t the first fast-casual restaurant to focus on salads. No, the self-built salad won’t be as good and you won’t have access to as many unique ingredients (you don’t often see furikake at a grocery-store salad bar), but there are trade-offs. There’s also the question of whether people want to pay those prices when they can go to pretty much any grocery store, from Cub Foods to the co-ops, and build a salad themselves, for less money. The big question is whether or not spending $10-$12 for a custom-made salad (or you can concoct your own, starting at $7.25) is something people will want to do, especially when winter returns and people look for warmer foods. Still, the salads were of good quality (overdressing aside), hearty in size, and prepared in front of the customer by friendly, knowledgeable staff.
The cucumber-lime Agua Fresca ($2.75) tasted aggressively of cucumber, with the lime disappearing or leaving a slight aftertaste that was somewhat vinegary in nature, and not in a good way. But one in our group thought the smoothie was - well - smooth, while another found an unpleasant grittiness with each sip. The Purple Rain smoothie ($6.75), with blueberries, strawberries, banana, apple, and unflavored pea protein, was not overly sweet, as its description might imply. We had mixed results with Crisp & Green’s beverages. If you like extra dressing, you’ll be fine otherwise, ask for a lighter dressing portion, or for dressing on the side. When ordering a salad, you’ll be asked if you want the “regular amount” of dressing we said yes, and found the salads to be overdressed. The softness of the noodles (cooked past al dente) paired well with the crisp veggies, giving a nice balance of textures, and the cool salad benefited from the prickles of heat from the furikake and the tangy dressing. A bed of soba noodles was topped with spinach, pickled shiitake mushrooms, Persian cucumber, carrots, and bean sprouts, sprinkled with wasabi furikake, and tossed with a yuzo-miso-sesame dressing. The Minnesoba Bowl ($10.50) was a congenial take on an Asian salad.
The only major qualm we had was that there was a high number of raw jalapeño pieces and a low number of crispy bacon (real bacon) pieces that’s an equation we’d like to see reversed. The dressing tasted strongly of fresh tarragon - not a bad thing - and there was a surprisingly generous amount of avocado. The vegetables were all fresh, with nary a wilting, slimy spinach piece in sight. It was a hearty mixture of spinach, kale, chicken, avocado, tomato, bacon, queso fresco, and jalapeño, tossed in a jalapeño green goddess dressing. On a recent visit, we tried the No Prob Cobb ($12.75) from the Signature menu. Salads fall into two categories: signature, which are greens-based, and grain bowls. If you’re thinking of salad as the sad, throwaway dish some eateries add to the menu out of a feeling of obligation, the good news is that you’ll find that Crisp & Green has put care and thought into developing its salad-based menu (along with a couple of seasonal soups). The North Loop’s Crisp & Green (another branch is in Wayzata) opened its doors a couple of months ago with the idea that people want plenty of fresh vegetables in the form of salads. It’s a noble idea: Build a quick-service eatery that’s a lot healthier than the average fast food place.
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