Fresh/Juice for Life on Crawford

Ian and I were walking around Queen Street today and stopped in at Fresh on Crawford. I have been pretty desperate to go for about 6 years, but laziness and Ian's indifferent/meat lover attitude have won out...until today.

This joint seems to be one last stronghold of the Hippies/granola eating/vegan types - a close rival to it's neighbor Fressen.

Ian had the "breathless" smoothie which included banana, strawberry and mango tastiness all blended up for $5.

I went with the soup, salad and cornbread combo for $9. The soup special was Moroccan chickpea. The flavor was ok, but was unfortunately way too thick and hearty to eat any more than about 1/3 of it at a sitting. Hopefully Ian can bail me out of my leftover problems tonight at dinner. "Save the whale (Ian's expression)" style, they put the leftovers in a sketchy paper type container with an ill-fitting lid covered with a flimsy rubber band. Perhaps not the most practical, for all but the most steady handed type person. I'm not too sure what the problem is, at work we have the same soup containers, and they have very solid fitting lids.

Salad was the highlight of the combo - a whole whack of assorted fresh greens, shredded carrot and beets. I ordered it with the house dressing - which I found to be delightful, but they did not put anywhere near enough on there in order to fully enjoy the salad.

Cornbread was dry and non-descript. Pretty much impossible to eat without a healthy layer of butter and a swig of water after each bite.

Ian's main was the basic rice bowl ($5) with an add-on ($2) tofu "steak". The tofu was delightfully flavored, and the rice bowl was also quite good. They had some pretty yummy dressing on the brown rice and the carrots and parsley added to the whole thing.

I liked the serve yourself water that came in wine bottle type thingy's, at least until I somehow poured it all over the table and my sweater. Then, I wished that they would serve me water. They also had a lemon slice floating around in there, but unfortunately, the lemon looked as though it had seen better days a few weeks ago.

They would be wise to invest in a better kitchen exhaust system. Sweet potato fry fume permeated the entire restaurant and in fact, 1 hour later as I type, I can smell it on my clothes.

Total including tax and tip was $26.