A Tough Crowd

Mark and I went to eat at a new "fast food" restaurant that opened up right across the street from Girya in Palo Alto called "Lyfe" Here's what Lyfe Kitchen's facebook page says about their concept:

LYFE Kitchen is a transformational, socially-responsible “lyfestyle” brand whose acronym stands for for Love Your Food Everyday. Follow us at @LYFEKitchen!

There really is alot more information about how Lyfe started, but I'm not a reporter so I invite you to gather up more info by google-ing them if you are interested in more details. Basically I became interested because Chef Art Smith is one of the co-creators.

Being a "foodie" myself, I am familiar with who Art Smith is and what has happened to him in the past couple of years. First of all Art was Oprah Winfrey's Chef, enough said. But what's more amazing than working for Oprah, much more amazing, is that Art has lost over 100lbs himself!

I've seen Art on numerous Cooking Shows most recently on "Top Chef Masters" a couple of years ago before he lost weight. Last year he returned to the Top Chef show as a judge for one of the challenges, most notable half the size as the year before. Of course I knew how he did it....he started eating right! No mystery. Good God if a professional Chef can't figure out how to eat right then who can?

The big trend everybody is starting to focus on about good health and eating is a "plant based" diet. I figured this out years ago and 100% credit it with the success of my own weightloss and lifestyle change. I consider my own diet to be plant based, but that doesn't mean plants only! I've written for years how I compose a meal based on vegetable first, protein second, fat, and then carbs. Sure I eat meat, alot of meat but I also eat more veggies than most vegetarians. And not to say that I don't have a "carb" meal without any veg like oats, or yogurt, but that's only one meal out of four daily meals.

Back to Lyfe Kitchen.....

I stopped by Lyfe Kitchen earlier in the morning to pick up a menu so I could decide ahead of time knowing Mark and I would come back after our training that afternoon. As usual, nothing on the menu excited me or impressed me enough to ever think about changing it out for any of my own homemade meals or foods....I'm a tough crowd! There wasn't anything on the menu I couldn't make better, bigger, less calories, more nutritous and cheaper myself....but I'm lucky that way. If Lyfe's philosophy is to "Love Your Food Everyday", well I already do!

I ordered barramundi with edamame, mushrooms and spinach in some kind of broth. Basically fish soup....it was OK. (I should of ordered the fish tacos that Mark had) When I was leaving the restaurant one of the Servers asked me

about my experience. I hesitated, but prefaced my comments with the fact that I had high standards.

I'm not a fan of edamame, in fact I don't care for it at all. It's a "non" flavor, they're soybeans and I consider it a carb....there are many other carbs I would chose over edamame. But I always try and choose something I would never cook at home. I never cook fish, and I've explained why in many past blogposts, so that's what I based my decision on.

Here's what I shared with the Server.....

The fish was just OK, the broth was actually good but not enough of it...its just broth for God's sake give me a little more! I think there was a couple of leaves of spinach, a decent amount of mushrooms and way to much edamame, but still only about 1/3 c I would guess.....is still didn't eat it all. She told me I could ask for the adjustments next time and the kitchen would accommodate my requests. Normally I would "custom" order had known what to expect, but I won't be back again...no need.

What I didn't tell her was how I thought the restaurant was way overstaffed, but I do recognize it was opening day and they wanted to make sure the customers were taken care of...but "too many cooks in the kitchen" (no pun intended) made the service confusing. They had one counter for credit and debit card payment and one counter for cash...really? Did this make it faster? Not in my opinion.

And I didn't find it to be "fast food" at all. In fact the

only reason why I didn't order something else or have my food adjusted is because I didn't want to wait anymore, I was HUNGRY!

Although there is no need for me to ever go back I can see the value for other people not in my situation. I guess some of the foods are better choices, especially the vegetarian and vegan choices, but in my opinion you could walk two blocks to Whole Foods and get just as many choices, faster food and cheaper! Yep, Whole Foods would be less expensive!

Mark and I spent $28 bucks! $12 per main dish and $2 per drink (I had tea, Mark had a cooler), and we were still hungry when we left.... We both grabbed one of the cookies I keep in the fridge at Girya for the ride home!

On a positive note....I had tons of fun training clubbells alongside my favorite trainer and coach...my sweetie!