Crisp and Green: Health Machine

Frankie Vochko, Features Editor|January 13, 2017

The outside of the modernized healthy restaurant Crisp and Green on Lake Street in Downtown Wayzata.

Opened recently, Crisp and Green is a healthy, counter service restaurant located at 755 E. Lake Street in downtown Wayzata. The restaurant offers a variety of salads, smoothies and soups, they even have a “build your own salad” option if you want to personalize your meal.

“

Crisps and Green is really nice because of all their vegan options and there is also very healthy options for everyone,

— our local vegan Danika Brockman said

Crisp and Green is unique because they serve a satisfying amount of vegan dishes, which are usually hard to find at most other restaurants. Some of their signature bowls are the Minnesoba Grain Bowl (which is vegan) and the Veggie Caesar Salad (which is gluten free). The Minnesoba Grain Bowl contains soba noodle, spinach, pickled shiitake mushrooms, Persian cucumber, carrot, bean sprouts, wasabi furikake and yuzu-iso sesame dressing. The Veggie Caesar Salad contains baby kale, romaine hearts, avocado, tomato, sunflower seeds, shaved parmesan, lemon squeeze, parmesan crisps and vegetable caesar dressing.

“I have been vegan for about three months now, and Crisp and Green is one of my outlets for tasty vegan food. [Crisp and Green] is really nice because of all their vegan options and there is also very healthy options for everyone,” senior Danika Brockman said.

When I ate there, I had the Aha-Ahi salad bowl and the roasted squash soup. The Aha-Ahi salad bowl mixed greens, ahi tuna, local farm egg, olives, tomato, haricot vert, fingerling potatoes and a fresno chile-lemon vinaigrette. The vinaigrette had a little spicy kick that made it quite tasty. The roasted squash soup was also very good. It was a smooth creamy soup that didn’t taste artificial or like it was from a can at all.

I’m not going to lie, the restaurant gives off a healthy, positive vibe that is enjoyable to be in and made me excited about eating healthy food-even though I was spending $25 on one meal. For a “fast food” type restaurant, Crisp and Green is kind of pricy. Their salads and grain bowls are $10-$13, soups are $4.75, and smoothies are $6.75.

The staff definitely succeeds on making the restaurant ambiance feel “crisp and green”.

Crisp and Green was opened by Ryan Burnet, who also owns popular Minneapolis restaurants Bar La Grassa, Burch Steak and Barrio. He hopes to make Crisp and Green a chain; Burnet is planning on opening a second Crisp and Green location in the North Loop area of Minneapolis on March 3.

In January, Burnet is also planning on opening a New York-style pizza place in an old gas station in Minnetonka. He is on planning on adding on a roof-top patio area to the pizzeria for the summer months to make it more appealing and upbeat for customers.