Kale to the chief? sweetgreen offers fresh & local ingredients

It’s a stereotype that engineers and techies like those on HBO’s Silicon Valley are junk food lovers, but sweetgreen, the latest restaurant to open in downtown Palo Alto, proves that it may be time to ‘reboot’ that assumption.

Greens and grains with local ingredients

photo courtesy of sweetgreen.

sweetgreen (no that isn’t a typo; the name is all lower case) has a simple menu of “greens and grains” that customers can order in either signature combinations or as a customized creation with items like farro, spicy sunflower seeds and watermelon.

With most salads and bowls coming out at about $11-15, sweetgreen is not inexpensive but it’s on par with other downtown options such as LYFE Kitchen and Sprout Cafe.

Cool ice cubes and even cooler drinks

In terms of drinks at sweetgreen, it’s not every day that a restaurant gets props on Google for its ‘awesome ice machine,’ but that’s apparently what inspired one reviewer. We didn’t notice anything that special about the ice cubes, but sweetgreen does offer some unique lemonades and ice tea selections including cucumber ginger fresca and watermelon cilantro.

photo courtesy of yelp

Restaurants and even a musical festival

The Palo Alto sweetgreen is part of a national chain of about 40 restaurants that began in Washington, DC with the vision to, “create experiences where passion and purpose come together.”

If that sounds like a sweeping platitude that could come straight from Silicon Valley, maybe it’s because sweetgreen’s founders are millennials with an entrepreneurial streak that has spawned sweetlife musical festivals and other enterprises including an outreach program to local schools about healthy eating.