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| - I rate the food at Cafe Zupas a 3 but am downgrading to 2 stars because of the long, slow-moving line, blaringly loud annoying music, and many high-calorie items on the menu in spite of all the marketing and even the design of the kitchen implying it is a healthy place to eat. If you like the food in spite of the calories, I suppose that's fine. But I don't like the marketing + high calorie content.
A lot of my coworkers were raving about Cafe Zupas, and when I checked out their website, I thought it looked promising. Lots of talk about making things from scratch, using fresh ingredients, etc. Great. These are Very Good Things.
One of my Zupas-enthusiast coworkers showed me the menu and was like, "look they even have quinoa protein bowls for you, Mr. Health Nut!" When I pointed out that the only one of these below 800 calories was the one with tofu, I got a lot of side-eye.
Maybe a week later, that same coworker asked if I wanted to join them for lunch at Cafe Zupas, and I agreed. When we got there, the line was almost to the door, and it was super loud inside. I blame the polished concrete floors, exposed ceiling, and extra-loud annoying pop music.
The design of the place is an over the top performance of "LOOK AT THE REAL INGREDIENTS AND SCRATCH COOKING HAPPENING HERE." There are fancy produce bins prominently displayed behind the salad line, and a platform on which a kitchen employee stands and uses a giant immersion blender to mix things like salad dressings. Because if you make salad dressing with a giant immersion blender in front of everyone it's gotta be good.
But I figured, hey, this is basically an attempt at a hipper, chef-ier Panera, even if it's a little silly with the kitchen design, at least I'll be able to find something to eat that fills me up, tastes halfway decent, and doesn't blow my calories for the day out of the water.
Thanks to the slow-moving food line, I had more than enough time to peruse the menu while waiting to get up to place my order. Unlike Panera where you place your order and go sit down with a pager, Cafe Zupas you place your order and slllllooooowwwwwwly move your way down toward the cash register while they make your food in front of you.
I got frustrated because the sandwich + salad combos all involve a whole sandwich (which really isn't all that big) and half salad, and it's very difficult to make a sandwich + salad combo below ***800 CALORIES***.
All but two of the 10 HALF salads on the menu are 380+ calories. You save some calories on the sandwiches by going with whole grain bread, but with the exception of the vegetarian sandwich, all the sandwiches are 580+ calories. There are 5 sandwiches in the 580-610 calorie range. These are not big sandwiches. They're not even the size of a 6" Subway sub.
So let's say you choose one of those 5 sandwiches, and the 240 calorie half Mangoberry salad, you're at 820 to 850 calories before you account for the roll and chocolate-dipped strawberry they give you. If you go for the 310 calorie half Nuts About Berries salad, you're at 890 to 920 calories.
I settled on the 580 calorie California Turkey sandwich and 240 calorie half Mangoberry salad, for 820 calories, before the roll (60 calories? I forget and it's not on their website) and chocolate dipped strawberry (45 calories) Cafe Zupas graciously includes with every meal.
Oh, maybe you want some soup? There are 10 soups on the regular menu. Except all but 3 of those, the little half soup bowls which are something like 4-6 oz, are 250+ calories. This is because 8 of the 10 soups are dairy. Seriously.
When you get past the sandwich, soup, and salad stations, here comes the dessert station calling out with cheesecake, brownies, and "creme brulees" that aren't actually bruleed on the top and are actually creme caramels if we want to be accurate with our dessert naming here. I laughed out loud at this station, because it's like, "you've gotten this far with the supposedly-but-not-actually healthy food, go ahead, treat yourself!" This was embodied by a lady a few spots ahead of me in line with a tray that consisted of a bowl of chicken tortilla soup, and a very large slice of cheesecake. Such a nutritionally complete meal you have there.
So I ate my sandwich and salad, and they were fine, if more calories than I really wanted. I gave my coworker my chocolate strawberry since I was kinda tearing the place she likes to shreds, and that way I could avoid the extra calories.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Cafe Zupas, but the "FRESH, REAL FOOD, MADE IN HOUSE" messaging, that implies the food is healthy, doesn't sit well with me when it's attached to a vaguely chef-y (but not really) soup/salad/sandwich chain where it's exceedingly difficult to create a meal that is both filling and not a big pile of calories.
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