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Sweetgreen, the eco-friendly salad and fro-yo shop founded by local Georgetown grads, celebrated the opening of their second location in Dupont Circle Thursday night. Sweetgreen is a little bit like Chop't meets TangySweet -- the restaurant offers a selection of signature and design-your-own salads and tart frozen yogurt with fresh fruit toppings. The restaurant also lives up to its name by using biodegradable/compostable dishware and utensils, recycled napkins, and reclaimed wood. Still not enough for you? Sweetgreen is also a certified Green Restaurant and is powered by 100 percent wind energy. To top it off, the take out menu is studded with seeds that will sprout into actual flowers if planted.
Last night's opening party featured samples of Sweetgreen's signature salads, frozen yogurt (dubbed "sweetflow"), and Honest Tea cocktails. We enjoyed the "Guacamole Greens" salad, a mix of mesclun, avocado, tomato, onion, chicken, and cilantro-lime dressing. It tasted remarkably like a bowl of guacamole but looked remarkably like a salad--in other words, a great excuse to eat guac for dinner. The "Chic P" (pronounced "sheek-p"), a combination of chicken, mesclun, spinach, roasted bell peppers, chickpeas, cucumbers topped with hummus lemon tahini dressing and pita chips, was a bit of a letdown. Although the pita chips added nice crunch, the chicken was dry, and the entire salad needed more dressing to pump up the flavor. One of Sweetgreen's signature salads will run you $8 or $9, or you can build your own starting at $6.
Now that Sweetgreen has set up shop on Connecticut Avenue, there are not two but three different options for tangy frozen yogurt in the neighborhood. (TangySweet and Mr. Yogato are only a few blocks away.) Sweetgreen's yogurt is only slightly sour, and the texture is dense and icy. If you like your frozen yogurt on the sweeter, less tangy side of things, you might prefer sweetflow's mild, clean taste. Sweetgreen only offers one flavor, plain tart, along with fresh fruit, nuts, and granola toppings. A small cup is $4 and a large is $6. Both sizes come with three toppings.
The opening also featured a DJ'd cocktail party in an unfinished commercial space next to the restaurant. We've heard rumors that a burger joint could be in the works there, but almost wish the owners would consider just turning it into a special event space. One thing that was certain during last night's festivities: Honest Tea does not make a good martini. The delicate, even watery flavor of Honest Tea's Honest Ade was completely obliterated by the sharp vodka. We appreciate the effort at a healthier, natural cocktail, but straight up fruit juice would have been a better alternative.
Sweetgreen will also be opening a Bethesda location this spring. A sweetflow fro-yo truck is also in the works.
Sweetgreen
1512 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
202-387-9338
Hours:
Monday - Sunday, 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.
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How long until we start talking about the great frozen yogurt bubble of 2009?
How about now? The 70s just called and they want their bacteria-laden frozen treats returned immediately.
Hey. Bacteria are the only culture some people have.
Don't knock the '70s! If they changed their name to "Sweet Leaf" and played nothing but Black Sabbath, I'd never leave.
Goin' home, late last night
Suddenly I got a fright
Yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw
A fairy with boots and dancin' with a dwarf,
Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes,
What's "green" about avocados shipped from Mexico and tomatoes in April?
Just sayin'.
Mold?
"Salad artists"? Really?
Wow! This is a great addition to the neighborhood. They should consider opening one on U Street. They would do a ton of business if they opened across the street from the new Cockpunchers.
=====================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SPICY COCKPUNCHING RETURNS TO DC!
Cockpunchers Restaurant & Lounge, LLC is a very unique Groin-grabbingly Upscale Casual Restaurant in the Historic Goatse Caverns in the Heart of the vibrant Hammock District. Chef Monkeyrotica is at his best at Cockpunchers Restaurant and delivers impressive new Ultraviolence inspired masterpieces. Located between Hammocks-R-Us and Swing Low Sweet Chariot, the recently remodeled Space is cozy yet elegant with splashes of bright gore against sophisticated rubber walls with stainless steel finishes, large shatterproof windows, and dark soundproof flooring.
Our atmosphere is grand guignol yet elegant. Enjoy our warm dining room by daylight or torchlight while listening to K-BILLY's Super Sounds of the Seventies Weekend. Only one block from the “U” Street/Cardoza/African-American Historical Monument/Whatevertheyrecallingitthisweek Metro Stop, you will find Cockpunchers Restaurant along the vibrant Human Waste in the Treeboxes Corridor. Whether in the mood for having your nuts nailed to a plank, having your wang slammed in a door, or just the classic boot in the groin, Chef Monkeyrotica's versatile menu of delightful menu items will satisfy so long as you've signed your waiver and given him power of attorney.
The name "Cockpunchers" refers to the Inuit cleansing ritual, whereby warriors move to upscale urban neighborhoods, have rocks thrown at their heads, and complain about having to pay $30 for a dry porkchop with a pretentious name like "Seared Loin of Pork with Cock Rot Reduction in a Ginko Tree Coulis." Our mission is to provide a friendly and professional service of exquisite food, wine, and cockpunches to the satisfaction of every tool who walks through the door. Let Cockpunchers Restaurant serve all your cockpunching needs!
[Se Habla Español! Und wir sprachen auf Deutsch also!]
The goat-penis stew with dried uvula flecks wasn't uninspired.
Agreed, but I had a nice "sweetflow" afterwards.
Sweetgreen really should consider partnering with another restaurant chain to offer a greater variety of food to reach a broader audience. Kinda like the KFC/Taco Bell mashup. I think a combo seafood/salad tossing/colonic irrigation clinic would work well in Dupont. Give it a snappy name like "Sweatflow/Cap'n Goatse's Poop Deck®" and watch the money roll in, along with the malpractice lawsuits.
...and the top-notch cockpunching just can't be beat (heh-heh).
Dear Sir, Madam, or lower-order primate -
I am writing to inquire about the possibiliyt of becoming a Cockpunchers Restaurant & Lounge LLC franchisee. Please send information regarding, and the necessary application forms for same.
I have a great spot picked out in Clarendon, a heretofor untapped market with substantial need for Cockpunching (tm). Please see attached a market and demographic study highlighting the high demand, but low supply, of cockpunching in the north-central Arlington area.
Yours humble servant,
UM
Dear Potential Franchisee,
Thank you for your interest in Cockpunchers! We have dispatched a Singing Cockpunch® to your address with an informative brochure, legal forms, and chloroform. Just relax, and listen to our representative explain how Cockpunchers (America's Most Violent Fast Casual Restaurant®) will drain your bank account, perform a complete cash-ectomy, and set fire to your home, in both interpretive dance and ear-piercing wail. When you awake, you will find yourself buried alive with only a lighter.
Welcome to the Cockpunchers Family!
This was good, but didn't get great until the end when you tagged on the sprachen auf Deutsch. I just happened to be on a call with a German client when I read it, and had to suppress a snort. Very aggressive junkpunching in Deutschland, I hear. Another point to the monk-tard.
Wow - is it just me or does that press release read like a Mad Libs?
A welcome addition to the neighborhood. I had the swish chicken poof pastry for lunch. It was tasty, but I prefer mine fruity rather than salty, like how they make at Knobgobbler's Bi-curean Roasterie down in Savannah.
Forget the food and the yogurt...100% powered by "wind"? That's impressive.
Rooftop windmills are all well and good, until some senile batfart with a lance shows up.
"Hold on, Dulcinea! DADDY'S COMING! Take that, you green-roofed bastards!"
Made possible by serving salads full of beans, brussels sprouts and broccoli.
I hope they have good ventilation. Or free matches.
"Sweetflow" is what you get after the probiotics hit your digestive tract...
FTW!....Also
Just what DC needs: another eatery that serves basic things at wildly over-inflated prices. It's possible to build a salad just as good, using mostly locally-sourced ingredients, for far less that, frankly, will taste better.
Having sampled the Georgetown location of SweetGreen a few times, I've not been overly impressed: it's a lot of money for what, in the end, is a lot of air (people don't tend to appreciate physically flat salads). I'll spend my money elsewhere, thankyouverymuch.
i actually like the place. it's a pretty decent salad, even if it is an overly inflated price. but it's in georgetown a block away from $3 cupcakes so what do you really expect?
and if you're going to order the chic p, just order the ingredients which will actually cost you $8. i guess the name is so chic it costs an extra $1 just to say it.
I take it you're unfamiliar with the rents around Dupont? Not exactly stripmall cheap. How many $4 salads would they have to sell to pay that rent, let alone the confiscatory business taxes?
Anyway, I'm sure the local ANC would shoot down any business that isn't "upscale" enough for their tastes. Just be glad it isn't yet another gold-plated buttplug boutique. How many does one neighborhood need?
4
I for one am happy that Sweetgreen is opening. I do like their guacamole salad.
What would you rather have open there, another Comfort One shoe store? Can we be happy that those nice storefronts won't be occupied by yet another crusty bank or Ann Taylor?