Opening Soft
Zen Burger Fast Food opened its doors today, up from Grand Central Station.
Pleased, and curious, to find mostly black (teen) staff ready for the lunch crowd I jumped into. For vegetarians, this is a potentially big hit. For us vegans, it's the Harvest Burger or Chili. The former was MIA, so I ordered a chili and fries. Chili was terrific, so much so I wanted some hot sauce to make it a straight-out A. Was intrigued by the big vats of natural tea (next to the soda dispensers); went with the Hawaiian something or other. A couple gals in front of me thought it was too much like prune juice - funny to me as it was not sweet enough to be such. It was dark and thick though, adding a bit of ice helped, I found.
This place will serve breakfast starting tomorrow, though only vegetarian for now; many vegan items (for both breakfast and lunch) are still under development and not ready for mass production/freezers.
Overall, ZB scores B- looking like an A- once said changes are done.
This place reminds me of Pan Pangea; it is a better shaped business, I find, if still very much a work-in-progress to delight and dazzle the customer. And Berlin's Yellow Sunshine (http://www.yellow-sunshine.com/) as well - they could benefit from looking closely at both, I believe.
And as the marketing guy noted Orean's in L.A. is really the only thing close to them; they too had problems on the vegan items front. (http://laist.com/2007/01/15/more_vegetarian_junkfood_at_orean.php)
TIDBITS
Zen Palate Union Square lease was up and new rent was multiples higher.... so time to move on.
Zen Palate L.A. is still to come.