Freshii

UPDATE: FRESHII AT 400 Q STREET HAS CLOSED.

I had lunch with my friend Philly last week at a restaurant we'd both been wanting to try.  Freshii is an international chain, offering, as you might expect from the name, fresh and healthy meals.  According to their website, "Freshii is focused on becoming the most convenient choice for healthy and fresh meals and snacks served quickly in a cool, clean, and environmentally sustainable setting for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between."  Sounds like a vegan's dream!

I checked out their menu online, and found a very cool feature.  They have a "custom built" option that allows you to create your own salad, wrap, soup, or bowl.  If you check off the items you want using the interactive online menu, it will calculate the calories and other nutritional information for you.  For example, if you decide you want a salad, you can choose the type of greens you want, add various unlimited toppings (included in the base cost of the salad), pick some premium toppings (these cost extra and add up quickly), and then choose your salad dressing and portion size.  The interactive online menu will then tell you the number of calories, and the amount of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and protein in the salad you've created.  If you find that you have more or less than you want of some nutritional element or another, you can tweak the ingredients using the online menu until you have exactly what you want.

Freshii also has set menu items.  For vegans, these include the Vegan Wrap (spinach, avocado, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, sweet corn, chick peas, sun-dried tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, and aged balsamic vinegar); the Spicy Noodle Bowl (rice noodles, grilled tofu, chopped almonds, bean sprouts, cucumbers, carrots, cilantro, and spicy lemongrass sauce); and 7 Vegetable Soup (100% vegetable broth, brown rice, grilled tofu, spinach, diced tomatoes, sweet corn, broccoli, carrots, and celery).  Looking at the menu, the only breakfast item I saw that was potentially vegan was oatmeal, but when I called the Sacramento location to make sure that it didn't contain any dairy products, I was told that they don't offer oatmeal anymore.

Freshii has two locations in the Sacramento area.  The Sacramento restaurant is located at 400 Q Street and their phone number is 916-538-6644.  The Folsom restaurant is located at 2776 East Bidwell Street, Suite 500, and their phone number is 916-983-1400.  More information about restaurant menus and hours is available on their website at http://www.freshii.com/index.php.