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| - College Park boasts no lack of quick, cheap lunch options. The trick is to find something healthy in between plates of Chinese food, philly cheese steaks, jerk chicken dinners and newborn-sized veal sangweeches.
Located right on College, just west of Yonge, this should be a prime location for a chain you'd think would cater to local office workers, of which there are plenty, since much of the real estate is occupied by Ontario government Ministries.
Maybe this location presumes too much of it's allegedly captive audience. Maybe the salarymens' salad expectations are low.
In any case, a single visit renders this Freshii outpost a one-and-done proposition, and makes me leery of ever visiting this chain again.
When Freshii first opened (as "Lettuce"), they offered huge salads with bright, crispy veg, fun dressings and ample amounts of protein and toppings of dubious nutritional value. Over time, portions have declined and the bright young things that manned the counter have been replaced by the same fast food lifers who bungle my order at just about every Tim Hortons or McDonalds or Pizza Pizza in town.
Most galling, in an effort to squeeze profit like so much wheatgrass juice, they eliminated the protein from their salads/wraps/burritos. A Cobb or "Buffalo Chicken" salad now costs about $6, but without chicken. Let's allow that the process...a buffalo chicken anything, for which the chicken costs extra. I haven't placed my order yet, and my blood pressure has started to rise.
Ordering is disorganized; prospective diners mill about until a brave soul ventures forth to request food. Repeatedly. Including the following exchange:
CUSTOMER: "I'd like that with chicken, please"
STAFF: "Tuna?"
CUSTOMER: "No, chicken"
STAFF: "Shrimp?"
CUSTOMER: "Chicken"
STAFF: "Shrimp?"
CUSTOMER: "Chicken"
STAFF: "SHRIMP!"
Perhaps staff are trained in the Seth McFarlane tradition of beating a joke into the ground?
Food arrives when it arrives. In this case, a noodle bowl and a "wrap".
The "wrap" arrives without protein, meaning it's mostly wilted greens drowning in sweet dressing, vomiting forth from a stale, disintegrating tortilla.Adding insult to injury, it's not so much a "wrap" as a "clumsy half-ass fold" which falls apart nearly instantly, transforming to its most entropic state..."salad" or maybe just "mess".
The bowl benefits from having a bottom and sides to keep the mediocrity in place. At the bottom of the bowl are a few squares of unadulterated, unseasoned tofu, and peanut sauce that's more Skippy than Siam. Plopped on top are a handful of gummy, heated, unseasoned rice noodles, and on top of that a riot of veg, which would be great but for the fact that it's all freezer-cold and similarly naked.
It's all edible, but that's as far as I'll go.
Lunch concludes with a vow to find better salad in greener pastures. What-a-Bagel nearby offers a salad bar complete with a Cobb salad that includes chicken in the price.
Or screw it. We'll just go to Banh Mi Boys.
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