Tasty Greens. If you’ve succumbed to the comfort food, work from home diet during the pandemic, greens might not show up in your diet enough.
Tasty Greens is out to maybe not fix that entirely, but at least make healthy food more easily attainable. The concept was brought to life by the owner of Thirsty Monk, partly because he saw the need and partly because it helped him reopen his bar.
Now open in Biltmore Park, and soon to come to Thirsty Monk’s downtown location, the concept is fast casual. And, according to the company website, they make efforts to source local, so you can expect quality ingredients. What also makes Tasty Greens attractive is the availability of drive-up takeout orders.
Dining review:Takeout under $25 at West Asheville’s Zia Taqueria
More:150 Asheville restaurants express opposition to councilman’s call for more restrictions
The menu’s focus is salads and grain bowls, with the latter served warm. Most salads either come with a protein or allow add-ons. Even for takeout, you can easily customize everything during the online ordering process. For instance, the Avo Ranchero salad comes with chipotle chicken, romaine, red onion, red pepper, tomato, avocado, herbs, cheddar crisps and chipotle ranch. But you can swap out a different type of lettuce, substitute a vegetarian protein or even remove any of the other ingredients with a click of your mouse. Tasty Greens lets you dial in exactly what you want your dish to be like.
In all, there are seven salad selections, a daily soup and several warm bowl options that are as customizable as the salads. But for the South of the Border bowl, which came with chicken, greens and accompaniments, I recommend sticking with the avocado ancho dressing. It’s just that good. For your bowl base, you can choose from roasted cauliflower, black pearl rice medley or quinoa. The crisply roasted cauliflower was absolutely delicious.
Is it affordable?
Almost everything on the menu is $11, with a few items only $9, and servings were generous for the price.
With one salad and one warm bowl, I still had a few dollars to play with before I crossed my takeout limit. You know what hits right at $3? The kids’ bowl. It turns out this is an absolutely great deal. We chose the Wagyu burger crumble out of the list of nine protein options for our daughter’s bowl over a black pearl rice medley base and added cheddar crisps, pickled peppers, olives and chipotle ranch. It was a hit and a good amount of food for such a small price tag.
Pickup is easy, though you might not be able to pull up right in front of the store if things are crowded. Call once you arrive and even if you have to pull a little past the store, they will bring the order right out and place it in the vehicle.
More:10 Asheville restaurants with outdoor dining serving brunch this weekend
All of the items were nicely packaged and bagged, making transport a breeze and allowing the warm items to remain that way until time to dine.
I managed to grab three entrees and top out at right where I wanted to be at $25. If you want to add on beverages, there are Boylan’s sodas, iced tea, fresh squeezed orangeade and lemonade, bottles of wine and of course canned Thirsty Monk brews.
Listen, I’m not trying to make you go off comfort food cold turkey. Maybe just ease back into healthy eating with a burger bowl and work your way to the kale salad.
IF YOU GO
Where: Tasty Greens
Phone: 828-774-6012
To order online: tastygreensusa.com
Beverage notes: Non-alcoholic, beer and wine.
Contactless pickup available? Yes.
Matthew DeRobertis is a chef, writer and father to a kid who loves food more than her dog. Contact him at [email protected].
___
Mackensy Lunsford has lived in Asheville for more than 20 years, and has been a staff writer for the Asheville Citizen Times since 2012. Lunsford is a former professional line cook and one-time restaurant owner.
Reach me: [email protected].
Read more: Subscribe to the Citizen Times here. Subscribe to my newsletter here.
