Strength: Quick, consistent fare, plated inventively; friendly staff; great location
Weakness: Limited menu
After discovering that Ru San’s doesn’t open its doors until noon on Sundays (!?!), we wound up at neighborhood favorite Fresh To Order for lunch today.
I’m prone to “menu rut” — ordering the same thing over and over again — so I deliberately avoided the fried chicken tenderloins and ordered the chicken caesar panini instead, substituting roasted corn peanut salad for the side of chips. By the time we filled our cups with citrus mint tea and found seats well away from the (well-intended but misguided) brunch area, a waiter arrived with my sandwich.
Tender chicken … good sauce … perfect bread. The biggest surprise, though, was the roasted corn peanut salad, which came laden with almonds, cashews, and walnuts, plus shaved carrots and chopped peppers. It’s served up in a deep bowl — more than I could eat — and could have been a meal in itself. Next time, in fact, I’ll probably order a bowl of this and be good to go. (Oh, there I go again … ordering the same thing over and over! Doh!)
Clyde’s pork loin panini must have been tasty — he scarfed it down without offering me a bite. (Hmph!) The grit cake, though, is a bit of a tease, always sounding better than it is in reality. (On second thought, “grit cake” isn’t exactly the most attractive-sounding dish, is it?)
I understand the limited menu allows the folks at Fresh to Order to keep things simple and fresh. The downside? Too many of the dishes on the menu amount to differently packaged versions of the same thing — i.e., a pork loin salad, a pork loin panini, a pork loin entree.
That said: it’s pretty remarkable that, right here in Midtown, you can get fast, fresh food served up by a friendly staff for less than ten bucks a head. That fact alone puts Fresh To Order on the “visit often” list!
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